React.js Firebase and Firepad Component

Question

I am trying to spin up the Firepad Editor inside of my React Component, but I am encountering an error. Here is my Component:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import * as firebase from 'firebase';
import CodeMirror from 'codemirror';
import Firepad from 'firepad';

export default class FirePadEditor extends Component {
  constructor() {
    super();
    firebase.initializeApp({
      apiKey: "AIzaSyCDre_vyeiK1a0qA8XSecI4elbF3hlobjc",
      authDomain: "firepad-test-d4679.firebaseapp.com",
      databaseURL: "https://firepad-test-d4679.firebaseio.com",
      projectId: "firepad-test-d4679",
      storageBucket: "firepad-test-d4679.appspot.com",
      messagingSenderId: "585682717429"
    });
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    var firepadRef = firebase.database().ref();
    var codeMirror = CodeMirror(document.getElementById('firepad'), { lineWrapping: true });
    var firepad = Firepad.fromCodeMirror(firepadRef, codeMirror, {
            richTextShortcuts: true,
            richTextToolbar: true,
            defaultText: 'Hello, World!'
          });
  }

    render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <div>testing</div>
        <div id='firepad'></div>
      </div>
  )
  }
}

My Firebase credentials are correct and I am seeing the 'testing' text on my screen.

When I run on localhost, I encounter this error:

Uncaught TypeError: p is not a constructor
    at new c (bundle.js:30211)
    at Function.c (bundle.js:30211)
    at FirePadEditor.componentDidMount (bundle.js:19892)
    at CallbackQueue.notifyAll (bundle.js:6516)
    at ReactReconcileTransaction.close (bundle.js:16274)
    at ReactReconcileTransaction.closeAll (bundle.js:6877)
    at ReactReconcileTransaction.perform (bundle.js:6824)
    at batchedMountComponentIntoNode (bundle.js:2724)
    at ReactDefaultBatchingStrategyTransaction.perform (bundle.js:6811)
    at Object.batchedUpdates (bundle.js:10848)

What I am seeing on my Node Console:

WARNING in ./~/firepad/dist/firepad.min.js
Critical dependencies:
14:3292-3299 require function is used in a way in which dependencies cannot be statically extracted
 @ ./~/firepad/dist/firepad.min.js 14:3292-3299

WARNING in ./~/firepad/dist/firepad.css
Module parse failed: /Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/firepad/dist/firepad.css Unexpected token (1:0)
You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type.
SyntaxError: Unexpected token (1:0)
    at Parser.pp$4.raise (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:2221:15)
    at Parser.pp.unexpected (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:603:10)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExprAtom (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1822:12)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExprSubscripts (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1715:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseMaybeUnary (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1692:19)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExprOps (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1637:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseMaybeConditional (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1620:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseMaybeAssign (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1597:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExpression (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1573:21)
    at Parser.pp$1.parseStatement (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:727:47)
 @ ./~/firepad/dist ^\.\/.*$

WARNING in ./~/firepad/dist/firepad.eot
Module parse failed: /Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/firepad/dist/firepad.eot Unexpected character '' (1:1)
You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type.
SyntaxError: Unexpected character '' (1:1)
    at Parser.pp$4.raise (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:2221:15)
    at Parser.pp$7.getTokenFromCode (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:2756:10)
    at Parser.pp$7.readToken (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:2477:17)
    at Parser.pp$7.nextToken (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:2468:15)
    at Parser.pp$7.next (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:2413:10)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseLiteral (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1830:10)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExprAtom (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1786:19)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExprSubscripts (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1715:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseMaybeUnary (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1692:19)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseExprOps (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1637:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseMaybeConditional (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1620:21)
    at Parser.pp$3.parseMaybeAssign (/Users/Air/Desktop/firepad/firepad/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/acorn/dist/acorn.js:1597:21)
 @ ./~/firepad/dist ^\.\/.*$

WARNING in ./~/firepad/dist/firepad.js
Critical dependencies:
2463:61-68 require function is used in a way in which dependencies cannot be statically extracted
 @ ./~/firepad/dist/firepad.js 2463:61-68
webpack: Compiled with warnings.

Any ideas on how to solve this problem?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 09 '17 at 07:38

Use these npm packages - brace, react-ace, firebase, firepad.

Since firepad needs aceto be present globally, assign brace to global var like(not the best way, but works) before importing firepad

import firebase from 'firebase/app';
import 'firebase/database';
import brace from 'brace';
global.ace = brace;
global.ace.require = global.ace.acequire;
import Firepad from 'firepad';

Use ref to get instance of ReactAce and initialize it in componentDidMount using:

new Firepad.fromACE(this.firepadRef, this.aceInstance.editor, options);

Similarly for CodeMirror editor.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '20 at 06:01

The problem is that Firepad has already loaded a reference to CodeMirror by the time you set the global variable, if you import or require it at the top of your class.

If you require Firepad after you set the window variable, it works fine:

import React, { useRef, useEffect } from "react";
import CodeMirror from "codemirror";
import "codemirror/lib/codemirror.css";

export const FirepadComponent = () => {
  const editorRef = useRef<HTMLDivElement>(null);

  useEffect(() => {
      const codeMirror = CodeMirror(editorRef.current);
      window.CodeMirror = CodeMirror;
      const Firepad = require("firepad");
      const firepadRef = database.ref();
      Firepad.fromCodeMirror(firepadRef, codeMirror);
    }
  });

  return <div id="codemirror" ref={editorRef}></div>;
};

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 19 '17 at 00:01

Try removing these lines from your code:

import * as firebase from 'firebase';
import CodeMirror from 'codemirror';
import Firepad from 'firepad';

and replacing them with:

<script src="https://www.gstatic.com/firebasejs/3.3.0/firebase.js"></script>

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.17.0/codemirror.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.17.0/codemirror.css" />

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.firebase.com/libs/firepad/1.4.0/firepad.css" />
<script src="https://cdn.firebase.com/libs/firepad/1.4.0/firepad.min.js"></script>

I spent several hours trying to configure Firepad and CodeMirror in my React.js application and was using the npm packages firepad, codemirror and firebase.

After I dug through the firepad source code and found this:

var CodeMirror = global.CodeMirror;
  var ace = global.ace;

  function Firepad(ref, place, options) {
    if (!(this instanceof Firepad)) { return new Firepad(ref, place, options); }

    if (!CodeMirror && !ace) {
      throw new Error('Couldn\'t find CodeMirror or ACE.  Did you forget to include codemirror.js or ace.js?');
    }

This made me consider moving away from the NPM packages and trying it out by adding the scripts to the . I am relatively inexperienced with JS package structure (my app is react + meteor) but I do know that this fixed the issue for me. Perhaps someone else can give a better explanation of why this is happening.

React.js Firebase and Firepad Component

3 Answers3