ERR_INVALID_URL with npm alias

[Cherry]

• I have searched for similar issues
• I am using the latest version of npm-check-updates
• I am using node >= 14.14

---

Steps to Reproduce

Dependencies:

{
	"dependencies": {
		"request": "npm:postman-request@2.88.1-postman.33"
	}
}

Steps:

• with above package.json
• npx npm-check-updates@16.13.0 -i

Current Behavior

TypeError [ERR_INVALID_URL]: Invalid URL
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:405:5)
    at Url.parse (node:url:445:17)
    at Object.urlParse [as parse] (node:url:167:13)
    at parse (C:\Users\james\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm-check-updates\node_modules\parse-github-url\index.js:27:17)
    at parseGithubUrl (C:\Users\james\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm-check-updates\node_modules\parse-github-url\index.js:14:38)
    at isGithubUrl (C:\Users\james\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm-check-updates\build\src\lib\version-util.js:396:51)
    at getPackageVersionProtected (C:\Users\james\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm-check-updates\build\src\lib\queryVersions.js:57:67)
    at C:\Users\james\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm-check-updates\node_modules\p-map\index.js:57:28 {
  input: 'npm:postman-request@2.88.1-postman.33',
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_URL'
}

Expected Behavior

Be able to parse and understand the npm alias. This works in version 7, as per npx npm-check-updates@7.0.0 -i, and reported at #633.

[raineorshine]

Hi, thanks for reporting.

What version of node are you on? I'm not yet able to reproduce on node v20, v18, or v16.

[Cherry]

Node v18.17.1, Windows 10. I'm able to consistently reproduce on my machine, interesting 🤔

[raineorshine]

Hmmm, strange. I ran npm update on npm-check-updates in case there was a regression in a dependency, but it still works for me.

If you'd like to take a stab at this, you could start by running the tests on your machine:

UPDATED:

git clone https://github.com/raineorshine/npm-check-updates
cd npm-check-updates
npm install
npm run build
npm test

[Cherry]

Looks like I got a lot of test failures, hmmm. test.log. But lots of successes too.

If I can do any further debugging on my end, please let me know.

[raineorshine]

Oops, I omitted a step. You'll need to run npm run build before running the tests.

[Cherry]

Here's the updated test log. It seems like most were successful, but a couple of failures:
test.log

[raineorshine]

Thanks. The doctor test failure is a known issue and unrelated. The two bin failures are false negatives caused by the presence of C:\Users\james\package.json. Not relevant to the error you are seeing.

Notably, all of the tests related to parsing npm and GitHub urls are passing. This (plus the fact that the tests pass on Windows in the GitHub action) suggests that the issue is not covered by the tests.

I can add your specific example to the tests and see if the CI can reproduce, but ultimately someone who can reproduce the issue on a local machine will need to identify the issue and open a PR with the fix.

[Cherry]

Thanks for the info, I'll do some more digging to see if I can identify where the issue is!

[Cherry]

The issue appears to be due to parse-github-url throwing an error:

> const parseGithubURL = require('parse-github-url')
undefined
> parseGithubURL('npm:postman-request@2.88.1-postman.33')
Uncaught TypeError [ERR_INVALID_URL]: Invalid URL
    at __node_internal_captureLargerStackTrace (node:internal/errors:496:5)
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:405:5)
    at Url.parse (node:url:445:17)
    at Object.urlParse [as parse] (node:url:167:13)
    at parse (E:\ncu-test\node_modules\parse-github-url\index.js:27:17)
    at parseGithubUrl (E:\ncu-test\node_modules\parse-github-url\index.js:14:38) {
  input: 'npm:postman-request@2.88.1-postman.33',
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_URL'
}
> parseGithubURL('16.13.1')
Url {
  protocol: null,
  slashes: null,
  auth: null,
  host: 'github.com',
  port: null,
  hostname: null,
  hash: null,
  search: null,
  query: null,
  pathname: '16.13.1',
  path: '16.13.1',
  href: '16.13.1',
  filepath: null,
  owner: null,
  name: null,
  repo: null,
  branch: 'master',
  repository: null
}
>

which appears to be due to url.parse doing this under the hood:

> url.parse("npm:postman-request@2.88.1-postman.33")
Uncaught TypeError [ERR_INVALID_URL]: Invalid URL
    at __node_internal_captureLargerStackTrace (node:internal/errors:496:5)
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:405:5)
    at Url.parse (node:url:445:17)
    at Object.urlParse [as parse] (node:url:167:13) {
  input: 'npm:postman-request@2.88.1-postman.33',
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_URL'
}
> url.parse("16.13.1")
Url {
  protocol: null,
  slashes: null,
  auth: null,
  host: null,
  port: null,
  hostname: null,
  hash: null,
  search: null,
  query: null,
  pathname: '16.13.1',
  path: '16.13.1',
  href: '16.13.1'
}

parseGithubURL('npm:chalk@1.0.0') returns null, whereas parseGithubURL('npm:chalk@1.0.0-dasda.2') throws an error, so it seems this library doesn't handle complex version strings very well.

The easiest solution would be to try...catch this and in my testing it does resolve it. I'll also add a couple of tests to catch this moving forward. PR to fix incoming soon!

[Cherry]

PR to fix at #1319. Thanks for working through that with me!

[Cherry]

Looks like this is a regression with Node 18.17 specifically: nodejs/node#49330