Question

It is possible to use node.js packages within Meteor as described here, however as require is not defined globally, packages having transitive dependencies (as for example xml2js or aws-lib) break with


ReferenceError: require is not defined

Any ideas on how to fix or work around this issue without altering the libraries?

Answer 1

I followed the instructions from your linked question. I used the node-xml2js library to test this with the test fixture from the code base and achieved it in the following way.

Meteor.startup(function () {

    // This solves the issue
    var require = __meteor_bootstrap__.require;

    // The example from node-xml2js readme
    var fs = require('fs'),
        xml2js = require('xml2js');

    var parser = new xml2js.Parser();
    fs.readFile('/home/prashant/order.xml', 'utf8', function(err, data) {
        parser.parseString(data, function (err, result) {
            console.log(result);
            console.log('Done');
        });
    });
});

I think the key was to define a variable require and assign it to Meteor’s require function. When Meteor loads the server assets, it also loads require and solves the problem of the transitive dependency. I made no changes to the node-xml2js library.

Hope this helps!