AbortController issue

[akarale]

TypeError: AbortController is not a constructor

Anyone else getting this error? How did you resolve it?

[jugglinmike]

Not me! But I might be able to help with more information.

• Which version of airtable.js are you using?
• What is the complete error stack?
• In what environment are you observing the error? If Node.js, the version of Node.js may help. If a web browser, the name and version of the browser may help.
• Can you provide a minimal test case?

[Aias]

I've also been getting this error after trying to upgrade to airtable 0.9.0 Glad I'm not the only one.

For a long time now I've been using airtable.js in my Netlify lambda functions, but upgrading to 0.9.0 has broken it without a resolution that I can find. If I go back to 0.8.1 it works fine, so there seems to be something going on with the recent move to node-fetch over request.

The Node version is 10.21.0.

Here's the full stack, though I'm not sure it's particularly helpful:

Lambda server is listening on 9000
Request from ::1: GET /.netlify/functions/airtableGet?base=commonplace&table=extracts
Response with status 500 in 57 ms.
Error during invocation:  TypeError: AbortController is not a constructor
    at runAction (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:9585:22)
    at Base.runAction (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:4780:5)
    at inner (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:8111:27)
    at Query.eachPage (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:8134:5)
    at Query.eachPage (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:1665:16)
    at Object.exports.handler (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:10666:6)
    at /Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/netlify-lambda/lib/serve.js:146:27
    at Layer.handle [as handle_request] (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/express/lib/router/layer.js:95:5)
    at next (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/express/lib/router/route.js:137:13)
    at next (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/express/lib/router/route.js:131:14)

A minimal test case would probably involve setting up a super basic Netlify lambda environment with the following single function:

var Airtable = require('airtable');
var base = new Airtable({ apiKey: '<my key>' }).base('<my base>');

exports.handler = async function (event, context) {
    base('<table name>')
        .select({
            // Selecting the first 3 records in Grid view:
            maxRecords: 3,
            view: 'Grid view'
        })
        .eachPage(
            function page(records, fetchNextPage) {
                // This function (`page`) will get called for each page of records.

                records.forEach(function (record) {
                    console.log('Retrieved', record.get('title'));
                });

                // To fetch the next page of records, call `fetchNextPage`.
                // If there are more records, `page` will get called again.
                // If there are no more records, `done` will get called.
                fetchNextPage();
            },
            function done(err) {
                if (err) {
                    console.error(err);
                    return;
                }
            }
        );
};

[reelmatt]

Given the error name, it looks like this points to line 46 in lib/base.js:

var controller = new AbortController();

While I haven't gotten a working solution yet, playing around with it a bit is seems like the issue is related to the switch from request to node-fetch as @Aias mentioned and how the library deals with Polyfills (the AbortController interface is experimental, per MDN).

I also opened #205 which could be pointing to the same/similar issue, but could also be Jest-specific instead of a problem related to Airtable.js.

[jugglinmike]

@Aias Version 0.9.0 works for me using Netlify's CLI for local testing and Node.js version 10.21.0. There may be subtle differences in the production environment, but there are other causes that could explain this. For starters: is global.window defined in your lambda function?

[jugglinmike]

@reelmatt Jest users should be able to upgrade to version 0.9.0 by installing the whatwg-fetch module and including that in their test environment via the --setupFiles option.

Here's a quick demo:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/jest
 FAIL  ./index.test.js
  ● Test suite failed to run

    ReferenceError: Request is not defined

    > 1 | const Airtable = require('airtable');
        |                  ^
      2 |
      3 | test('my test', async () => {
      4 |       Airtable.configure({

      at Object.<anonymous> (node_modules/airtable/lib/abort-controller.js:5:25)
      at Object.<anonymous> (node_modules/airtable/lib/base.js:8:23)
      at Object.<anonymous> (node_modules/airtable/lib/airtable.js:3:12)
      at Object.<anonymous> (index.test.js:1:18)

Test Suites: 1 failed, 1 total
Tests:       0 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        0.849 s, estimated 1 s
Ran all test suites.

$ npm install --save-dev whatwg-fetch
$ ./node_modules/.bin/jest --setupFiles whatwg-fetch
 PASS  ./index.test.js
  ✓ my test (363 ms)

Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       1 passed, 1 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        1.379 s
Ran all test suites.

This may be the long-term solution because Jest uses JSDom, and JSDom is not supported by airtable.js.

[Aias]

Hey @jugglinmike – window.global is not defined when I use Netlify's local cli. I'm surprised that it would be for you without additional setup, since these are supposed to be server-side functions.

[jugglinmike]

@Aias It's global.window that I'm wondering about, but not because it's defined in my environment. If some other code in the lambda environment (maybe via another dependency) defined that global variable, then it could interfere with the logic that airtable.js 0.9.0 uses to identify which environment it is running in.

Looking deeper, I'm also curious about how airtable.js is being imported. The minimal test case uses Node.js's require, but that doesn't square with the error stack trace. Each frame references a file called airtableGet.js, but this library doesn't define such a file. The function names there do seem to align with the internals of this library, though. I first thought that Netlify's CLI was running a deployment-time bundling process, but the error stack seems to describe files on your development machine.

Do you know where airtableGet.js is coming from?

[Aias]

@jugglinmike Ah sorry there's some confusion here, that's my fault.

On the window.global vs. global.window thing, I think I just miswrote the order before - in any case it doesn't matter, it's undefined either way.

airtableGet is the name of my lambda function, so it's what gets invoked when I send a request to http://localhost:8888/.netlify/functions/airtableGet/. Here's the stack trace which is just setting up a netlify dev environment with exactly that code from above, inside a file called airtableGet.js:

Error during invocation:  TypeError: AbortController is not a constructor
    at runAction (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:9585:22)
    at Base.runAction (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:4780:5)
    at inner (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:8111:27)
    at Query.eachPage (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:8134:5)
    at Query.eachPage (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:1665:16)
    at Object.exports.handler (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/lambda/airtableGet.js:10666:6)
    at /Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/netlify-lambda/lib/serve.js:146:27
    at Layer.handle [as handle_request] (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/express/lib/router/layer.js:95:5)
    at next (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/express/lib/router/route.js:137:13)
    at next (/Users/tricknombley/Code/netlify-api/node_modules/express/lib/router/route.js:131:14)

[Aias]

If you have a repository that works with airtable 0.9.0 and that minimal netlify test case, I'd be happy to clone it and see if it runs on my machine.

[jugglinmike]

Sure. Here's a repository using that same code:

https://github.com/bocoup/airtablejs-netlify-demo

When I change the values according to my account and Airtable Base schema, the lambda function development environment prints data from the Base as anticipated.

That may be a dead end, though, because the error stack trace above indicates that airtableGet.js is substantially different from the script we've been discussing. It references a number of functions that are not defined in that script. In addition, while the script is just 33 lines long, the frames in the stack trace reference line numbers in the thousands.

[Aias]

Thanks for all your help. Your example repo works. I was using the outdated netlify-lambda repository which does some kind of webpack compilation as part of its build step (I don't really understand the specifics). But when I switched everything from ES6 to CommonJS in my local repo, things started working again.

So I guess the moral is: drop dependency on netlify-lambda, use CommonJS module syntax?

[jugglinmike]

Sounds like a plan to me!

That build process appears to be modifying the environment, so it's effectively a new execution environment--just slightly different than the environments which Airtable explicitly supports. It doesn't seem feasible for this project's maintainers to ensure proper integration there (especially if it's considered outdated).

So while I'm receptive to evidence in favor of reverting the latest release, your particular problem doesn't seem to qualify as a regression. We still don't know much about @akarale's situation, though...

[studds]

I'm getting this error as well. I'm using airtable via node and webpack. There seems to be an issue with the node imports:

airtable.js/lib/fetch.js

Line 1 in 3d0ffc9

var fetch = require('node-fetch');

and

airtable.js/lib/abort-controller.js

Line 3 in 3d0ffc9

module.exports = require('abort-controller');

In each case, the require refers the the module, rather than the function / class respectively.