Setting base directory to resolve relative requires

[mattdesl]

This is similar to #1971, but I'm looking to fix relative requires as well.

Using the following with node-integration, everything is working fine:

window.loadUrl('file://' + __dirname + '/index.html')

However, when index.html and the client index.js is served on localhost, the require paths are not getting resolved correctly. Is there a way to set the path for relative requires?

require('./relative/path/foo.js') <-- cannot find module

The issue can be reproduced here:
https://github.com/mattdesl/test-electron-require

My main reason for using localhost is for a smoother development experience: I can stream transpiled source (i.e. webpack, browserify, babel) to the response, rather than wiring up a build step with static files.

[mattdesl]

Update: Using a local host instead of file:// also seems to change __filename and __dirname semantics.

[zcbenz]

require can only read a file on file system, if you load the page with any protocol other than file://, there is no way to make require read relative path unless you set NODE_PATH yourself.

[mattdesl]

I have been testing by changing NODE_PATH, which fixes require statements like require('foo'). However, the base path for relative requires, as well as __dirname and __filename behave a bit differently.

I guess there is no way of resolving this without a source transform like browserify?

[zcbenz]

I guess there is no way of resolving this without a source transform like browserify?

No, this is a limitation of Node.js, the whole module system only works on filesystem.

[kpdecker]

require does only operate on the filesystem, but it doesn't seem out of line to allow for the paths to be manually set so you can lookup within the file system of the local project when loading from a HTTP endpoint. This is effectively the same concept as the ability to lookup from the electron base libraries that is currently done when require is called from a HTTP loaded module, as the relative paths are "~/electron-prebuilt/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Resources/atom.asar/renderer/lib/init.js" even though this is HTTP.

[mjangir]

After debugging for one week, I found this and it quickly resolved my issue. In my dev mode, I was directly loading localhost in electron main process window and was trying to reference some externally exposed webpack dependencies that was throwing error of cannot find module.

Though I was using html-webpack-plugin that creates a hidden html file from template in memory and injects all webpack bundles into it. So I had no idea how to load that in memory html file with file:// protocol in electron main window. Then I found html-webpack-harddisk-plugin that fixed everything.

Thank you everyone for giving me the hint.

[cawoodm]

I'm having the same problem: My index.html (in root /) references ./js/main.js (in a script tag) which does require("./pow"). The error is "Cannot find module './pow'" and I can see it's looking in root / relative to index.html and not in /js which is where the file pow.js is. Is there any way to fix/workaround this? Surely require should work relative to the path of the .js that called it??