Is ZeroMQ for Node.js compatible with Electron?

Question

I am have a huge headache from trying to get the ZMQ Node bindings working with Electron, especially on Windows. I am working on Windows 7 and Ubuntu 16.04 and both of them have two separate issues.

On Windows, I get an error when I try to do require('zmq')

C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\bindings\bindings.js:91 Uncaught Error: Could not locate the bindings file. Tried:
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\build\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\build\Debug\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\build\Release\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\out\Debug\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\Debug\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\out\Release\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\Release\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\build\default\zmq.node
 → C:\vueelectron\app\node_modules\zmq\compiled\6.1.0\win32\x64\zmq.node

I've tried compiling with VS 2013 and 2015, rebuilt multiple times, used electron-rebuild nothing seems to be working.

On Linux it loads up fine but the problem is that when I send a message, it seems to get stuck in a loop somewhere and it keeps sending sending hundreds of messages and goes on doing that indefinitely. This was resolved by upgrading from the version of ZMQ in the Ubuntu repositories to the latest one downloaded from the ZeroMQ website.

This is the code I used in my index.html file of my Electron app.

const electron = require('electron')
const zmq = require('zmq')

const socket = zmq.socket('req')
socket.connect('tcp://10.10.0.51:3111')

socket.on('message', function (data) {
  console.log(socket.identity + ': answer data ' + data)
})

socket.send('test')

Has anyone else been able to get Electron + ZMQ working? If so, what is your development enviroment like? Thanks.

Answer 1

The problem is the unmatched node.js binary that is delivered by Electron and your version of node. The long answer is that you need to compile Electron and ZeroMQ with the same Node.js headers. Here is the response from Electron community http://github.com/electron/electron/issues/6805 . There's a short answer now though!

Use zeromq in place of zmq (same API). zeromq provides prebuilt binaries for electron and node.js for OS X, Windows, and macOS/OS X. After installing zeromq , rebuild for the version of electron you're using:

npm rebuild zeromq --runtime=electron --target=1.4.5

Thanks to the zeromq.js team and have fun with ZeroMQ!

Answer 2

It might be safer to put access to your queue behind an api layer. You might have better success with stability too, native modules in electron can be very tricky.

And but that I mean have a REST server which your electron application communicates with. It would send a message to that api, which then queues the message for your application. Restrict access to the queue at the network level to only the api server.