CommonJS require paths when proto files are in subdirectories

[rwlincoln]

Lets say we have .proto files organised into directories:

apis/myproject/myapi/v1/myapi.proto
apis/myproject/otherapi/v1/otherapi.proto

Generating code involves including the apis directory:

$ protoc -I./apis  ...  ./apis/myproject/myapi/v1/myapi.proto

The generated code might be output to:

src/myproject/myapi/v1/
src/myproject/otherapi/v1/

The google/protobuf and grpc/grpc plug-ins generated require calls like this:

... = require("../../../myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb.js");

However, the grpc-web plug-in generates require calls like this:

... = require('./myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb.js');

The generated require paths should account for the directory structure relative to the import path.

[stanley-cheung]

I can see this, in the grpc-web plugin generated code myapi_grpc_pb.js:

... = require('./myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb.js');

That file myapi_grpc_pb.js is also placed in the src/ directory (assuming we are passing :./src to both --js_out and --grpc-web_out), so it can indeed find the require('./myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb.js').

Does this mean that you want to put the myapi_grpc_pb.js generated code in the src/myproject/myapi/v1 directory instead?

[rwlincoln]

That is correct. I would like the generated grpc-web code to be in the same directory as all the other generated JS code (Protobuf, gRPC, TypeScript definitions) for that package. For example:

src/myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb.js
src/myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb.d.ts
src/myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_grpc_pb.js
src/myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_grpcweb_pb.js

As you point out, the grpc-web code can be placed in the top-level src directory and the require path is valid. However, when dealing with several APIs, with the goal of publishing the source and distributing packages, I believe the best practice is to have all the code organised into a hierarchy of directories. The google/protobuf, grpc/grpc and improbable-eng/ts-protoc-gen plug-ins create the myproject/myapi/v1/ directory structure when passed :./src.

[rwlincoln]

As in #245 (comment), in order to maintain the current behaviour, the out= configuration option could be made optional and when omitted the plug-in could be made to work in a way that is consistent with the google/protobuf and grpc/grpc plug-ins.

[rogchap]

@rwlincoln @stanley-cheung
I'm still seeing this behaviour, but only for the typescript output

The generated typescript tries to import from "./myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb" and not "../../../myproject/myapi/v1/myapi_pb"

I think the same fix in #249 needs to be applied to the typescript output.

[rogchap]

This seems to have been fixed by #360