ushu / Node Addon Loader

A simple loader to embed native addons in node or electron projects.

This package is a mix between:

• node-loader that loads a node module from an absolute path
• file-loader that loads copy a file into the bundle and return its path

This one package allows to load a node native addon, binary file will end up copied into the output directory and loaded dynamically from its relative path.

Install

Add the package to your package.json

$ yarn add --dev node-addon-loader

Usage

Add the loader to your webpack.config.js for all .node native files.

webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.node$/,
        use: 'node-addon-loader',
        options: [
          basePath: resolve(__dirname),
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Note the basePath option: it will instruct the loader of the "base" path, from where the node runtime will be started. It will generate loading path relative to this URL. For example is you develop an electron app with a bundle emitted into dist/ directory, you want all the required paths (emitted require statements) to be relative to the current directory of the electron runtime (they all will be like dist/xxxx.node).

In your application

You require the file directly

import node from 'relative/path/to/myLib.node';
// or
const node = require("relative/path/to/myLib.node");

or with the inline syntax:

Inline

import node from 'node-addon-loader!./myLib.node';

with an alias

a good option is to keep your modules in some place and create aliases for them, such as:

// webpack config
module.exports = {

  resolve: {
    alias: {
    "myLib": "/path/to/myLib.node",
    }
  },

  // ...

}

and then use your alias directly:

import myLib from "myLib";

Thanks

big thanks go the the authors of node-loader and file-loader which I eagerly copied.

TODO

Fix the issue with emitFile, see TODO in code.

All contributions are welcome, this is MIT do-whatever-you-want-I-dont-care code.