package.json main attribute should be a string

[sbruno]

I'm using ui-grid on a nodejs project and it is failing to do a npm publish because it expects package.json main to be a string and currently it is an array

npm verb stack TypeError: Path must be a string. Received [ './less',
npm verb stack   './ui-grid.css',
npm verb stack   './ui-grid.eot',
npm verb stack   './ui-grid.js',
npm verb stack   './ui-grid.svg',
npm verb stack   './ui-grid.ttf',
npm verb stack   './ui-grid.woff' ]
npm verb stack     at assertPath (path.js:8:11)
npm verb stack     at Object.win32.resolve (path.js:130:5)
npm verb stack     at Packer.applyIgnores (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\fstream-npm\fstream-npm.js:109:59)
npm verb stack     at Packer.<anonymous> (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\fstream-npm\node_modules\fstream-ignore\ignore.js:181:17)
npm verb stack     at Array.filter (native)
npm verb stack     at Packer.IgnoreReader.filterEntries (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\fstream-npm\node_modules\fstream-ignore\ignore.js:179:31)
npm verb stack     at Packer.<anonymous> (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\fstream-npm\node_modules\fstream-ignore\ignore.js:92:12)
npm verb stack     at Packer.<anonymous> (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\fstream-npm\node_modules\fstream-ignore\ignore.js:134:5)
npm verb stack     at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\graceful-fs\graceful-fs.js:76:16
npm verb stack     at FSReqWrap.readFileAfterClose [as oncomplete] (fs.js:380:3)

On older versions of node it was not failing probably because node is now doing some validation, but according to the docs, an array is not valid and it should be a string:
https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json#main

The array was added by this issue: #3673
It looks as some tool extracts information from the main property of bower.json, but it does not say anything about package.json.
Maybe package.json is generated from bower.json, but some special care should be taken for the main attribute.
I see that in the source, package.json and bower.json are different, in fact, package.json does not contain a main attribute. But when I see my module at src\web-app\bower_components\angular-ui-grid\package.json it looks like bower.json

https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-grid/blob/master/bower.json
https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-grid/blob/master/package.json

For example, bootstrap-bower have different values for main in bower.json and package.json:

https://github.com/angular-ui/bootstrap-bower/blob/master/bower.json

https://github.com/angular-ui/bootstrap-bower/blob/master/package.json

Ohh... After inspecting a bit the code, it looks as the problem is in this task, that is copying the same contents to package.json and bower.json:

ui-grid/lib/grunt/plugins.js

Line 336 in 9d1a0b4

fs.writeFileSync(pkgJsonFile, JSON.stringify(json, null, 2));

[oji]

Same here...

[imbalind]

@sbruno do you know how we could fix this? I'm not an expert in this matter, but if you don't feel like making a PR and you can explain me what to do I'll do it

[sbruno]

@imbalind I'm not an expert either...
As a workaround for my use case I just replaced the list with the string './ui-grid.js'

I think there are a couple of possibilities, but I don't know if they could have any side effect in npm packaging.

One option, since the source code already has a package.json could be to save it as is to the distribution package. The plugin.js file I mentioned, creates a new one and adds a version, but the package.json in the source already has a version. Anyway we could keep the code that saves the verision, just instead of using the json object used for generating the bower.json file use the object read from the source package.json. This is done in line 11 of plugins.js:

ui-grid/lib/grunt/plugins.js

Line 11 in 9d1a0b4

var pkg = require(path.resolve(projectPath, 'package.json'));

So the change could be something like this:

diff --git a/lib/grunt/plugins.js b/lib/grunt/plugins.js
index 7be0968..c25b50c 100644
--- a/lib/grunt/plugins.js
+++ b/lib/grunt/plugins.js
@@ -331,9 +331,9 @@ module.exports = function(grunt) {
     fs.writeFileSync(bowerJsonFile, JSON.stringify(json, null, 2));

     // Add version for package.json
-    json.version = currentTag;
+    pkg.version = currentTag;

-    fs.writeFileSync(pkgJsonFile, JSON.stringify(json, null, 2));
+    fs.writeFileSync(pkgJsonFile, JSON.stringify(pkg, null, 2));
   });

   // Publish release to NPM

I think that may work....

Other option could be to overwrite the main attribute of the object that is now being saved to bower.json and package json, choosing the .js file of the array, when saving it to the package.json file. Something like:

// Add version for package.json
json.version = currentTag;

///// START OF NEW CODE
// Set the right main value in package.json
json.main = GetSomehowTheJSFile(json.main)  // should return string "./ui-grid.js"
///// END OF NEW CODE

fs.writeFileSync(pkgJsonFile, JSON.stringify(json, null, 2));

This would be implementing the workaround.

[sbruno]

@imbalind I created a PR for the first option: #4785

[logeshthedev]

@imbalind When this pull would be merged in to master?
Thanks for the fix @sbruno

[karsunke]

Is there a workaround for this? I do have the same problem.

[lpand]

+1

I managed to get through this with these lines in the package.json

"browser": {
    "angular-ui-grid": "./node_modules/angular-ui-grid/ui-grid.js"
}

[sbruno]

In my case, I did a script to modify the contents of the package.json and added it to the build system.

// Hack angular-ui-grid until bug gets fixed https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-grid/issues/4743
var fs = require("fs");
var file = "web-app/bower_components/angular-ui-grid/package.json";
var contents = fs.readFileSync(file);
var json = JSON.parse(contents);
json.main = './ui-grid.js';
fs.writeFileSync(file, JSON.stringify(json, null, 4));