Webpack-dev-server: Cannot resolve module 'child_process' to build XMLHttpRequest

[aksonov]


ERROR in ./~/parse/~/xmlhttprequest/lib/XMLHttpRequest.js
Module not found: Error: Cannot resolve module 'child_process' in /Users/aksonov/UPDT/sf/node_modules/parse/node_modules/xmlhttprequest/lib
@ ./~/parse/~/xmlhttprequest/lib/XMLHttpRequest.js 15:12-36

[aksonov]

It seems I can't use require('xmlhttprequest').XMLHttpRequest for web?

[jhnns]

The xmlhttprequest module shims the XMLHttpRequest-API to node (for whatever reason - it's the ugliest API ever ^^). You wan't to bundle your code for the browser, and the browser doesn't know about processes and child processes.

There are two solutions to this problem:

• Ask the maintainers of parse why they're using the xmlhttprequest module instead of node's http module.
• Provide an alias for the xmlhttprequest module which just exports the original XMLHttpRequest object

module.exports = XMLHttpRequest;

Btw: This is not a webpack-dev-server issue.

[codeboyim]

according to @jhnns 's answer, adding this to the externals in webpack.config.js fixed Parse for me.

externals:[{
    xmlhttprequest: '{XMLHttpRequest:XMLHttpRequest}'
}]

[jeffyuans]

Hi @jhnns I tried to use an alias for the xmlhttprequest module. The way I did is I created a dummy a.js file and I put module.exports = XMLHttpRequest; in it. In my make-webpack-config.js I have
var alias = {
xmlhttprequest$: "./a.js"
};
Now when I start production server I have error
module.exports = XMLHttpRequest;
^
ReferenceError: XMLHttpRequest is not defined
It seems webpack cannot find XMLHttpRequest (the original one supposedly is supported by the browser?) Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks!

[thiagoh]

this worked for me

const nodeExternals = require('webpack-node-externals');

module.exports = {
  //... webpack configs..
  externals: [nodeExternals()], // in order to ignore all modules in node_modules folder from bundling
};