[Feature Request] React Native Compatibility

Hello, this is a new feature request!

I’m trying to get this library to work with React Native, and having a few issues. I’d love to work with the team on improving this if allowed so they can keep focusing on other priorities.

After implementing barrels, I discovered a couple of issues caused by a (IMHO very silly) React Native behaviour: if it sees any require('...') call, it tries to load the module in this require. It doesn’t matter whether this code is even inside if(false) or try { ... } catch { ...}. Since most of these require()s call built in Node stuff, and React Native runtime is not Node, it fails. See https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/5079 for reference.

So, it sees stuff from node_support/ and crypto_utils.ts, and shows an error for loading them, even if I’m not using these.

Each of these 2 can have different ways to handle.

crypto_utils.ts

In crypto_utils.ts, the line that breaks it is let crypto = require('crypto');. We can workaround the issue by doing something like:

const nodeRequire = require;
...
let crypto = nodeRequire('crypto');

This is sweet and easy, and if you approve, I’ll create a quick PR for it.

node_support

The contents of node_support is meant to be for Node. We can use the same workaround as above, but it’s not clean and quite silly actually.

If you approve, again, it might be a temporary solution.

Another temporary solution is to remove node_support from the main barrel. This way Node users will have to import from @openid/appauth/built/node_support (which has its own barrel), but having to import from built is quite silly.

The reason we have this issue is that TypeScript cannot have a base folder for looking for submodules except the package root - see https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/8305#issuecomment-343003095 as mentioned in https://github.com/openid/AppAuth-JS/pull/34#issuecomment-343003850

we can solve the built issue by compiling in-place instead of having src and built folders. Or, when publishing the package, implement a workflow where we copy the package.json file to built folder and publishing from inside that folder.

I can have a spin at this workflow (publishing from built but I cannot test it as I don’t have publish permissions. So, we either:

• Move ts files to package root and compile in place
• Change require calls in nnode_support for now
• Remove nnode_support from the root barrel for now
• If the team has capacity, implement the workflow that publishes from inside built

Happy to do pull request for any option you choose, or provide better clarification if this issue is a bit overwhelming.

[mraible]

I wrote an article for scotch.io last week that shows you how to use React Native App Auth to add authentication to a React Native application. Hope this helps! https://scotch.io/tutorials/build-a-react-native-app-and-authenticate-with-oauth-20

[mraible]

@paulbrittain That’s a good question for Formidable, the folks that run React Native App Auth.