Missing jszip in browserify bundle

[SystemParadox]

The require call for jszip uses a concatenated string require('js'+'zip') which stops browserify from including it. The results in a runtime error Cannot find module 'jszip'.

This seems to be intentional (#76?), but I don't understand why because it just breaks the bundle. Is there a reason why jszip cannot be included and if so how can we build a browser bundle?

Thanks.

[SheetJSDev]

Note: I primarily consume these libraries as direct scripts or in nodejs, so I can't speak from personal experience on this matter.

As I understood it, there is no way to tell browserify that a script is optional. The cpexcel script weighs in at over 300K, so it's probably not a good idea to include it by default if it addresses a handful of corner cases with third party writers in foreign languages (excel itself does not generate XLSX or XLSB files with strange encodings).

If there is a solution whereby we can preserve the optionality of certain dependencies while mandating others, I'm all for it :)

[SystemParadox]

The only sane way to deal with optional dependencies is to allow the user to inject them:

var XLSX = require('xlsx');
XLSX.load_cpexcel(require('cpexcel'));

It would seem sensible to move cpexcel to its own package, especially since it is shared between xlsjs, xlsx and harb.

In this particular case it seems that jszip is a hard dependency, so the solution is to change the require call to a normal require('jszip') to ensure it gets included in the bundle.

Browsing through the code I would suggest that most of the require calls in the sheetjs packages should be changed to use normal dependencies.

Thanks.

[SheetJSDev]

If I understand browserify correctly, your example would always add the cpexcel dependency to the bundle.

I do agree that un-breaking JSZip is probably a good idea

[SystemParadox]

In my example the user injects the dependency if they want it. If they don't want it, they simply use xlsx without doing load_cpexcel. The xlsx package should contain no require calls for cpexcel at all- it has to use the package passed in by the user, or not at all.

When creating a browser-side bundle there is no concept of a global package which might or might not be available. They only way to not have a package added to the bundle is not require it in the first place.

[barbalex]

I get the same error: "Uncaught Error: Cannot find module 'jszip'", using browserify.

Then I tried including the script file in index.html. This works - client side.

The thing is: I need to implement this server-side too. The app is a CouchApp. The list-function uses requireJS to load dependencies (I copied the 'xlsx.full.min.js' file from the node version). It looks like this doesn't work with xlsx as I get an error ('Object has no property \"jszip\') even though the code is exactly the same as client side.

[barbalex]

I copied cpexcel.js, jszip.js and ods.js from the node-modules folder and referenced them manually in xlsx.js. This worked. Unfortunately xlsx.js also references fs. And I have no Idea how to get a fs.js file (noob here)

[barbalex]

well, got fs.js from the joyent github site. But it has a lot of dependencies...
...and it seems they are dependent on a node environment, for instance 'global'
so I gave up

[SheetJSDev]

@barbalex there should be no need to include 'fs' in the browserify bundle.

[barbalex]

@SheetJSDev It is referenced here: https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx/blob/master/dist/xlsx.js#L869-875

When running xlsx I got an error 'Object has no property "fs"' or similar.

But yeah, I'm probably doing something basic wrong.

I try to get xlsx to run in a couchapp for list functions. Inside list functions requireJS-compatible scripts can be referenced (only) when they reside at an exact path (lists/lib). So I can't require as if it were node.js. And I cant browserify-shim xlsx as I can in the browser.

[SheetJSDev]

@SystemParadox @barbalex so there are 3 types of requires (node, browserify, requirejs) and the modules are used as follows:

• codepage module cptable = require('./dist/cpexcel'); is an optional dependency. @SystemParadox gave a potential solution above
• jszip module is required
• fs module is only used in nodejs
• ods module is optional.

What is the correct way to handle each case? @SystemParadox gave the optional case above, and that makes sense, but does that also work under requirejs?

@barbalex can you give a sample code block using requirejs? I'm not that familiar, so a sample code segment would help this discussion

[SystemParadox]

Dependency injection would also work with requireJS, since it would be entirely up to the user to load the optional module.

• fs should probably be wrapped in a try-catch (or a test for node environment). Browserify stubs it out, requirejs will throw a "module not found" error
• jszip should be a normal require statement

Thanks.

[cconrad]

I worked around this by adding explicit require statements for the two modules ('fs' and 'jszip') in my Browserify configuration:

var b = browserify({
  /* ... other options, e.g. "debug:true" ... */
  require: [
    'fs',
    'jszip'
  ]
});
b.transform(/*...*/); b.bundle(); // etc.

Then it's just as easy as var xlsx = require('xlsx');.

[hiattp]

Any movement on this? @SystemParadox's solution seems solid, there a fork or branch that implements it?

[SystemParadox]

A (possibly better) convention I have seen used in other packages is to have a second entry point for the 'extended' version:

// normal version (no optional deps)
var xlsx = require('xlsx');
// extended version with optional deps
var xlsx = require('xlsx/extra');

[barbalex]

I am using xlsx in another project now too (not a CouchApp), built with webpack, see this issue here: #285. I am getting this message in devtools when webpack builds the project:

./~/xlsx/jszip.js
Critical dependencies:
12:436-443 This seems to be a pre-built javascript file. Though this is possible, it's not recommended. Try to require the original source to get better results.
 @ ./~/xlsx/jszip.js 12:436-443

As said in the message, this is not critical. Xslx works like a charm.

I think it might be related to the above discussion so I added it here. But as I don't understand what is going on: please excuse if this should just be noise!