Protobuf.js: util.isNode / Error: not supported

[jumpinvestor]

protobuf.js version: 6.8.8
Ubuntu: 19.04
Node: 12.2.0
Angular: 7.2.15 with server-side rendering enabled

I'm seeing "Error: not supported" popping up in an Angular 7 app on Node 12.2.0. Just upgraded Node from 10.15.3, where it did not have the error.

After a little digging, it looks like this references _/src/root.js_:233-234:

and _/src/util/minimal.js_:55:

After commenting out the check in root.js, everything seems to work fine. Is there another solution?

[dcodeIO]

The check is here: https://github.com/protobufjs/protobuf.js/blob/master/src/util/minimal.js#L55

There might be something in your stack invalidating it, or did node change something? Workaround:

protobuf.util.isNode = true; // or your own check
...

[jumpinvestor]

I think it might be related to Angular's server-side rendering. The util object captures global.document but not global.process, which could make sense for SSR:

[MichaelSolati]

I'm having a similar, so what I found worked (which I don't think would be a hard/serious change) is in src/util/minimal.js I reordered the util.global. It was:

util.global = typeof window !== "undefined" && window
           || typeof global !== "undefined" && global
           || typeof self   !== "undefined" && self
           || this; // eslint-disable-line no-invalid-this

And I swapped it to this:

util.global = typeof global !== "undefined" && global
           || typeof window !== "undefined" && window
           || typeof self   !== "undefined" && self
           || this; // eslint-disable-line no-invalid-this

I'm using mocha with jsdom so the window object is passing first and therefore being set as the global, not the NodeJS.Global! But if I swap the order it works fine. Could this be implemented into the regular library?

[dcodeIO]

Hmm, good question. The old order assumes that a global window is super unlikely inside of a node module because there isn't an implicit global scope one could accidentally declare such a variable in, while the new depends on the assumption that no dev would ever define a global var named global in a browser context, which is unlikely.

[mfursov]

I believe this may be a conflict with NestJS people use a lot for SSR:
https://github.com/nestjs/ng-universal/blob/master/lib/utils/domino.utils.ts

If protobuf.js is initialized first, there is no error with isNode mode detection.

[jumpinvestor]

That makes sense.

[MichaelSolati]

It's also an issue if you are using jsdom with mocha.

[michelepatrassi]

EDIT: wrote an article about how I fixed this with angular SSR: https://medium.com/@michele.patrassi/angular-ssr-firebase-save-days-of-debugging-by-reading-these-fixes-fcb060e248bb

OLD
same, I had this with the latest version of firebase (currently 6.4.0). I needed to downgrade to "^5.9.1" to still have SSR working.

There are some valid comments up in the thread: what's the best way to approach this?

[diegoblattner]

Several questions arise from this, but...

util.isNode = Boolean(process && process.versions && process.versions.node);

Fixes the problem, considering process is a global variable since node 0.1.7 and versions since 0.2.0
I will create a PR.