using grpc with webpack?

[slootzky]

Hey ,
using google's pubsub node client and it depends on grp which depends on node-pre-gyp.
when using webpack (for serverless functions) I get the following runtime error :

package.json does not exist at...

this comes from pre-bindings.js :
if (!existsSync(package_json_path)) { throw new Error("package.json does not exist at " + package_json_path); }

and this because in grpc_extensions.js is using __dirname and then relative path :

var binding_path = binary.find(path.resolve(path.join(__dirname, '../../../package.json')));

[murgatroid99]

There's a bigger problem with using webpack: gRPC uses a Node C++ addon that interfaces with low-level Node C APIs. It's not going to work except on Node.

[wenbozhu]

@slootzky We haven't yet released grpc-web which uses a different stack than grpc (due to browser limitation). Once grpc-web is available, we should consider making it deployable in Node (webpack etc).

If you need early access to grpc-web, let me know.

[slootzky]

seems like it's also doesn't work on a nodejs Azure function

[wenbozhu]

This is a separate issue, i.e. making grpc calls from Azure functions. We should verify.

[murgatroid99]

@slootzky Can you elaborate? What problems did you experience when you tried to use gRPC in a Node.js Azure function?

[slootzky]

@murgatroid99 it's because azure functions runs over edgejs
I got the same behaviour as this SO question

[raviqqe]

By the way, the code in grpc_extensions.js @slootzky specified should use something like require("PATH") so that bundlers and optimizers like webpack, rollup, and prepack can detect loading files in external directories. I believe that bundling and optimization of JS code are getting popular even on server-side nowadays.

[slootzky]

@raviqqe totally agree , especially when things like prepack become more stable , I think runtime optimization is always more than welcome.
Think that there shouldn't be boundaries between pure node.js to bundlers like webpack / react-native packager etc.

[rogerbell82]

Totally Agree.
Webpack / React are so popular now.
Its disappointing that I cannot integrate Google Cloud modules such as Vision into my project.

[raviqqe]

It seems to be impossible because of limitation of node-pre-gyp's API.