Node modules with sub-directories: "Error parsing triggers: Cannot find module 'ibm-watson'"

Question

I have a Firebase Cloud Function that calls IBM Watson to get a token. I'm updating it from the old username/password auth to the current IAM auth.

Here's the code from the IBM documentation:

const watson = require('ibm-watson');
const { IamAuthenticator } = require('ibm-watson/auth');

// to get an IAM Access Token
const authorization = new watson.AuthorizationV1({
  authenticator: new IamAuthenticator({ apikey: 'fakekey-1234' }),
});

authorization.getToken(function (err, token) {
  if (!token) {
    console.log('error: ', err);
  } else {
    // Use your token here
  }
});

When I run firebase deploy --only functions I get this error:

Error: Error parsing triggers: Cannot find module 'ibm-watson'
Require stack:
- /Users/TDK/LanguageTwo/functions/index.js
- /Users/TDK/.nvm/versions/node/v13.10.1/lib/node_modules/firebase-tools/lib/triggerParser.js

ibm-watson is installed in my /functions/node_modules directory:

I reinstalled ibm-watson, and for good measure I ran npm install in my functions directory. Plus I ran npm-check and updated all my node modules.

The specific line that causes the error is:

const watson = require('ibm-watson');

When I comment out that line the functions deploy without error. Unfortunately, the function doesn't run. :-)

This line does not cause the deploy error:

const { IamAuthenticator } = require('ibm-watson/auth');

I use IBM Watson in other Firebase Cloud Functions in the same index.js file. These lines from other functions don't cause deploy errors:

let TextToSpeechV1 = require('ibm-watson/text-to-speech/v1');
...
var LanguageTranslatorV3 = require('ibm-watson/language-translator/v3');

The problem seems to be that requiring the parent directory ibm-watson fails, but requiring the subdirectories of the parent directory works. Any suggestions?

chughts chughts · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-12T16:08:34

This is as expected. If you take a look at the GitHub repo for ibm-watson - https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/node-sdk - you will notice that there is no example requiring the top level library. This stops you from pulling in the full library, when you only need to pull in a small sub-component.

Node modules with sub-directories: "Error parsing triggers: Cannot find module 'ibm-watson'"

1 Answers