CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascripttypescriptnpmprotocol-buffers
PawkyPenguin
PawkyPenguin

Reputation: 250

Protobuf: Uncaught reference error: exports is not defined

I'm trying to get protobuf to run in typescript.

The official Google Documentation says to simply use npm install google-protobuf and then to require('google-protobuf').

I'm unexperienced with npm, so I ran into several problems there. First of all, require('google-protobuf') returned an error 404, because the file was not found. I instead opted to require the file manually, so I sourced it in my index.html:

<script src="node_modules/google-protobuf/google-protobuf.js"></script>

This should work right? What instead happens is that I get an Uncaught reference error: exports is not defined. How do I even begin to debug this? I tried to take a look at the google-protobuf.js file and found a few exports statements, but I don't know what I'm expected to do here.

If it helps at all, here is my tsconfig.json file:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es5",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "sourceMap": true,
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "removeComments": false,
    "noImplicitAny": false
  },
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules",
    "typings/main",
    "typings/main.d.ts"
  ]
}

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2589

Answers (2)

Badacadabra
Badacadabra

Reputation: 8497

First, please make sure you have a proper environment. I suggest you to:

  1. Install and/or update node
  2. Install and/or update ts-node

Then, try the following solutions:

JavaScript (ES5) + CommonJS

// test.js
var protobuf = require('google-protobuf');
console.log(protobuf);

Run the script with node test.js.

TypeScript + ES6 modules

// test.ts
import * as protobuf from 'google-protobuf';
console.log(protobuf);

Run the script with ts-node test.ts.

If you see a regular object in your terminal, congrats! The module is working. But now, if you want to use it in your browser, you will need module loaders/bundlers like Browserify or Webpack...

Upvotes: 1

Bernd Strehl
Bernd Strehl

Reputation: 2920

you are using typescript. Try import protobuf = reqquire('google-protobuf')

or install the types via npm install @types/google-protobuf' and include it with import * as protobuf from 'google-protobuf'

The include in the HTML does not work, because the js files use imports and the dependencies are not resolved.

If you want to use this on the client side, you can finally build your fronted js file with browserify.

Upvotes: 0

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