Error when adding sqlite3: You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type.

[aguynamedben]

Thanks for this excellent project. I've been using it a lot the past 6-8 to learn Electron+React.

I want to store a lot of data in the client, so I'm trying to add sqlite3 to the project. I'm trying to do what is done in electron-boilerplate-sqlite. I understand to some degree that in order to use sqlite3 with Electron, electron-builder must be used, which uses node-pre-gyp somehow to build the sqlite3 bindings.

First, I add sqlite3 to the project:

yarn add sqlite3

It appears that sqlite3 installs correctly. "sqlite3": "^3.1.8", is added to my package.json, but when the postinstall step runs (which critically includes the electron-builder install-app-deps command), I see the following errors:

[1] ERROR in ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/info.js
[1] Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'aws-sdk' in '/Users/ben/code/tesla/node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib'
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/info.js 14:14-32
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib ^\.\/.*$
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/node-pre-gyp.js
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/lib/sqlite3.js
[1]  @ dll renderer
[1]
[1] ERROR in ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/publish.js
[1] Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'aws-sdk' in '/Users/ben/code/tesla/node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib'
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/publish.js 17:14-32
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib ^\.\/.*$
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/node-pre-gyp.js
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/lib/sqlite3.js
[1]  @ dll renderer
[1]
[1] ERROR in ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/unpublish.js
[1] Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'aws-sdk' in '/Users/ben/code/tesla/node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib'
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/unpublish.js 15:14-32
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib ^\.\/.*$
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/node-pre-gyp.js
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/lib/sqlite3.js
[1]  @ dll renderer
[1]
[1] ERROR in ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/node_modules/rc/index.js
[1] Module parse failed: /Users/ben/code/tesla/node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/node_modules/rc/index.js Unexpected character '#' (1:0)
[1] You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type.
[1] | #! /usr/bin/env node
[1] | var cc   = require('./lib/utils')
[1] | var join = require('path').join
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/info.js 11:13-26
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib ^\.\/.*$
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/node-pre-gyp.js
[1]  @ ./node_modules/sqlite3/lib/sqlite3.js
[1]  @ dll renderer
[1] npm
[1]  ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
[1] npm ERR! errno 2
[1] npm ERR! electron-react-boilerplate@0.12.0 build-dll: `cross-env NODE_ENV=development node --trace-warnings -r babel-register ./node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack --config webpack.config.renderer.dev.dll.js --colors`
[1] npm ERR! Exit status 2
[1] npm ERR!
[1] npm ERR! Failed at the electron-react-boilerplate@0.12.0 build-dll script.
[1] npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

If I isolate the the electron-builder step to it's own action...

    "postinstall-electron-builder": "electron-builder install-app-deps",

and run npm run postinstall-electron-builder, electron-builder seems to run fine.

I think there is some incompatibility between Webpack, node-pre-gyp, concurrently, and/or sqlite3 that is keeping the postinstall step from running correctly. Maybe it is something related to webpack/webpack#4603, where a CLI tool is being bundled.

I'd appreciate any ideas or guidance you could offer in correctly getting sqlite3 working with this project. Thanks for your time.

[aguynamedben]

A similar error was encountered here: gundb/sqlite#4 but it looks like they never figured out the cause and instead settled on a workaround.

[amilajack]

Here's the docs for using native dependencies with this boilerplate

Here's an example of the boilerplate with sqlite.

[aguynamedben]

@amilajack Thank you, I skipped over the part in the README about how the project has 2 different package.json files, sorry about that. I also didn't realize there were wiki docs too. Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction.