Webpack adding jQuery plugin: Error: jQuery requires a window with a document

Question

I'm using Angular 4 +webpack.I've added a jQuery plugin to nonTreeShakableModules const in webpack.config.vendor.js:

const path = require('path');
const webpack = require('webpack');
const ExtractTextPlugin = require('extract-text-webpack-plugin');
const merge = require('webpack-merge');

const treeShakableModules = [
    '@angular/animations',
    '@angular/common',
    '@angular/compiler',
    '@angular/core',
    '@angular/forms',
    '@angular/http',
    '@angular/platform-browser',
    '@angular/platform-browser-dynamic',
    '@angular/router',
    'font-awesome/css/font-awesome.css',
    'zone.js',

];
const nonTreeShakableModules = [
    'bootstrap',
    'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css',
    'es6-promise',
    'es6-shim',
    'event-source-polyfill',
    'jquery',
    'virtual-keyboard'              //HERE
];

When starting the application I got this error:

NodeInvocationException: Prerendering failed because of error: Error: jQuery requires a window with a document

If I refresh the page for 2-3 times,error is gone. Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

As said in the comments of your previous question, you can't run javascript code which depends on window and some other cases (like session storage) on the server-side with server-sided pre-rendering.

Templates such as ASP.NET Core Angular Web templates comes with server-sided rendering enabled. This works fine for applications which doesn't require session storage, authentication or access to browser components or dom-tree.

You have to disable server-sided prerendering by removing the asp-prerender-module="ClientApp/dist/app.module.server.ts" tag helper from your Index.cshtml.

Replace

<my-app asp-prerender-module="ClientApp/dist/app.module.server.ts"></my-app>

with

<my-app></my-app>

Of course replace my-app with the selector of your application, typically app in templates.

Alternatively you have to run code conditionally, as pointed in this GitHub issue:

// boot-client.ts file 
import 'ngx-charts';

// some.component.ts
import { isBrowser } from 'angular2-universal';
import * as $ from 'jquery';

// inside ngOnInit 
if (isBrowser) { 
    $('body').hide();  // or whatever call you need to make
}

to avoid running such code on the server-sided pre-rendering.