When deploying an app to gh-pages that uses confetti-js

• Link to When deploying an app to gh-pages that uses confetti-js podcast on anchorfm

Recently I created an audio-visual app that uses the confetti-js library.

I was using npm in my application already, so I decided to use confetti-js via npm. I checked to see whether there was a confetti-js npm package, and there was!

I checked the npm package documentation to see how I had to add confetti-js to my application. I was using it "the classic way" (vanilla JavaScript), as I did not have any babel-related and webpack-related workflow, which would have permitted me to use ES6 modules. This is what was suggested:

<script src="node_modules/confetti-js/dist/index.min.js"></script>

I wasn’t thinking in terms of gh-pages, and added the package via this script.

Then I was told to do the following in my ( main).js file:

const confettiSettings = {target: 'my-canvas'}
const confetti = new ConfettiGenerator(confettiSettings)
confetti.render()

But of course, since I was deploying to gh-pages, I added my node_modules/ directory to my .gitignore file. Which meant that my application would not have any node_modules to access on remote.

When I deployed the application to gh-pages, I got the following error in the Chrome Developer Tools Console:

TypeError: ConfettiGenerator is not a constructor

Of course not, because the application could not access the confetti-js code inside the node_modules/ directory!

I immediately realized what was going on, and searched Google to see whether there was a CDNJS that I could use. And there was!

I added the confetti-js CDNJS to my script tag, removed the confetti-js npm package, and re-deployed to gh-pages. This time everything worked as expected.

This is what my script tags look like now in my index.html file:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/confetti-js@0.0.18/dist/index.min.js"></script>
<script src="scripts/js/main.js"></script>

On the other hand, if I had deployed to a remote hosting service such as Netlify, for example, or zeit.co, the instructions on the confetti-js npm package page would work beautifully, as they both build the application using node_modules, even though we ignore them in our .gitignore files. They go by what we have listed in our package.json files.

So if you are using an npm package such as confetti-js, but are hosting your front-end application on gh-pages, go with a CDNJS instead of a reference to code residing in your node_modules/ directory. It will also work like a charm! That also means that you wouldn’t even need to install the confetti-js package to begin with!

On a side note, now that Microsoft owns both Github and npm, there should also be a reference to how to add an npm package to an application that is hosted on Github gh-pages, if applicable! Not everyone knows, out of the box, about the CDNJS alternative!

I will be embedding this episode of Plugging in The Holes along with a transcript in the form of a post on interglobalmedianetwork.com for your hearing and reading pleasure. Bye for now!

Related Resources

• TypeError: ConfettiGenerator is not a constructor

• Confetti Generator on npmjs

• confetti-js on jsdelivr.com