Need some help with NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_EXTERNAL settings after migrating to 1.1.1 (request-promise-native)

[NealSr]

Describe the problem/error/question

I was able to pull in request-promise-native in the past on v.0.222.1 but after migrating to 1.1.1 I am getting errors trying to pull it in as a dependency in a code node. I’m sure it is something simple but I’ve tried quite a few variations based on the environment variables guide.

What is the error message (if any)?

ERROR: Cannot find module 'request-promise-native' [Line 1 | Item Index: 0]

Folder Structure

ubuntu@ip-address:~/n8n-docker$ ls /home/ubuntu/n8n-docker/node_modules/
lodash  psl  punycode  request-promise-core  request-promise-native  stealthy-require  tough-cookie


ubuntu@ip-address:~/n8n-docker$ ls -alh /home/ubuntu/.n8n/custom/node_modules/
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 2 ubuntu ubuntu 4.0K Aug 24 16:00 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 ubuntu ubuntu 4.0K Aug 24 16:00 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu   43 Aug 24 16:00 request -> ../../../../../usr/lib/node_modules/request
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu   58 Aug 24 16:00 request-promise-native -> ../../../../../usr/lib/node_modules/request-promise-native

Workflow

docker-compose file environment variables

    environment:
      - N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE=false
      - N8N_HOST=n8n.domain.com
      - N8N_PORT=5678
      - N8N_PROTOCOL=https
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - WEBHOOK_URL=https://n8n.domain.com/
      - GENERIC_TIMEZONE=America/New_York
      - N8N_CUSTOM_EXTENSIONS=/home/ubuntu/n8n-docker/node_modules
      - NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_BUILTIN=*
      - NODE_FUNCTION_ALLOW_EXTERNAL=request-promise-native,jsonwebtoken,axios,querystring,form-data,moment
      - NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=4096
      - EXECUTIONS_PROCESS=main
      - DB_SQLITE_VACUUM_ON_STARTUP=true
      - EXECUTIONS_DATA_PRUNE=true
      - EXECUTIONS_DATA_MAX_AGE=720
    volumes:
      - ${DATA_FOLDER}/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n
      - ${DATA_FOLDER}/local-files:/n8n-local-files

Information on your n8n setup

• n8n version: 1.1.1
• Database (default: SQLite): SQLite
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main): main
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): docker-compose
• Operating system: ubuntu

[NealSr]

Some additional info:

I was able to get past the error by mounting a volume for each and every directory in node_modules, but that doesn’t seem sustainable. Is that the only way to import external modules in n8n 1.x ?

volumes:
      - ${DATA_FOLDER}/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n
      - ${DATA_FOLDER}/local-files:/n8n-local-files
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/252K:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/252K
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/.bin:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.bin
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/.package-lock.json:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.package-lock.json
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/ajv:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/ajv
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/asn1:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/asn1
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/assert-plus:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/assert-plus
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/asynckit:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/asynckit
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/aws-sign2:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/aws-sign2
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/aws4:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/aws4
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/bcrypt-pbkdf:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt-pbkdf
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/caseless:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/caseless
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/combined-stream:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/combined-stream
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/core-util-is:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/core-util-is
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/dashdash:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/dashdash
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/delayed-stream:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/delayed-stream
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/ecc-jsbn:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/ecc-jsbn
      - ... ... ...
      - ... ... ...
      - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules/verror:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/verror

[MutedJam]

This is unfortunately expected @NealSr as with v1 n8n will no longer load custom nodes (and other modules) from its global node_modules directory (n8n v1.0 migration guide | n8n Docs).

Based on the compose config you have shared it seems to me you could simplify things by mounting your entire /usr/local/lib/node_modules directory rather than the individual modules (though I haven’t tried this first hand):

volumes:
  - ${DATA_FOLDER}/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n
  - ${DATA_FOLDER}/local-files:/n8n-local-files
  - ~/.n8n/custom/node_modules:/usr/local/lib/node_modules

Perhaps you want to give this a go?