ipfs-http-client doesn't work in the browser with Meteor

[yurtsiv]

• Version: 49.0.2

• Platform:
  Linux hostname 5.10.15-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Feb 10 10:42:47 UTC 2021 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Severity: High

Description:

I’m having troubles using the latest version of ipfs-http-client with Meteor on the client.
It fails with: Object prototype may only be an Object or null: undefined.
This error comes from graceful-fs package. The dependency flow is as following:

ipfs-http-client -> ipfs-utils -> fs-extra -> graceful-fs

The latest working version is 41.0.1.

Steps to reproduce the error:

I've created a minimal reproduction of the issue. All the steps to reproduce the error are provided in README. Let me know if you need more details.

Thanks!

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[achingbrain]

That's interesting - it's probably trying to pull node-specific code into a browser bundle.

Can you configure Meteor to follow browser semantics for building the front end code?

[yurtsiv]

@achingbrain Yes, that's the case.

The meteor build system is not as configurable as say webpack. They provide meteor-node-stubs which mocks some of the Node.js modules, but the fs is set to null. Altough the fs is not actually null, becuase it would crash with a different error, so there's some additional magic going on.

I'm wondering, how does it work with webpack. Does the code which contains references to fs gets shipped to the browser with some stub implementation of fs or it just gets stripped out?

[achingbrain]

fs-extra is used by ipfs-utils in the src/files/glob-source.js file. Glob sources are only used when importing from a filesystem so shouldn't be used in the browser.

Webpack respects the browser field in package.json which for ipfs-http-client sets src/files/glob-source.js to false so it doesn't get pulled in to the bundle which would pull fs-extra in with it.

[yurtsiv]

Ok, turns out Meteor does respect browser field but only for relative paths (meteor/meteor#6890 (comment), meteor/meteor#9311).

Wouldn't it be better to specify browser specific files for a particular package in the package itself, thus reducing coupling? In this case move the declaration to ipfs-utils itself (same here).

[achingbrain]

Wouldn't it be better to specify browser specific files for a particular package in the package itself, thus reducing coupling?

Yes - could you please open a PR to the affected modules to make this change?

It sounds like it would then also fix the issue with Meteor.

[yurtsiv]

Sure. Will do this in a few days.

[yurtsiv]

Maybe a few days more 😅 Really busy currently

[yurtsiv]

@achingbrain Just wondering, why js-ipfs-utils is not a part of this repo?

[achingbrain]

It was briefly but it’s used in too many places so needed it’s own release schedule.

[yurtsiv]

Hi. Can you take a look at the following PRs, please: #3630, ipfs/js-ipfs-utils#121

[yurtsiv]

To continue the discussion on #3630, I don't have a solution for normalise-input, BUT I do think it makes sense to at least get rid of

{
   ...
   "browser": {
      ...
      "ipfs-utils/src/files/glob-source": false
      ...
    }
}

in every applicable package.json under js-ipfs/packages, since it's already handled in ipfs-utils (ipfs/js-ipfs-utils#121). No need to have it twice.

Please confirm that my reasoning is correct and I'll make a PR.

[whizzzkid]

js-ipfs is being deprecated in favor of Helia. You can #4336 and read the migration guide.

Please feel to reopen with any comments before 2023-06-05. We will do a final pass on reopened issues afterward (see #4336).