ERROR: Could not locate the bindings file

[matthewbschneider]

Getting the following error on Debian 3.16.7 GNU/Linux

Error: Could not locate the bindings file. Tried:
→ /node_modules/node-expat/build/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/build/Debug/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/build/Release/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/out/Debug/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/Debug/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/out/Release/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/Release/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/build/default/node_expat.node
→ /node_modules/node-expat/compiled/4.4.5/linux/x64/node_expat.node
at bindings (/node_modules/node-expat/node_modules/bindings/bindings.js:88:9)
at Object. (/node_modules/node-expat/lib/node-expat.js:4:32)

[astro]

find . -name node_expat.node

[matthewbschneider]

@astro

$ find . -name node_expat.node
./node_modules/node-expat/build/Release/node_expat.node
./node_modules/node-expat/build/Release/obj.target/node_expat.node

[astro]

looks alright?

[BradZzz]

I am also seeing this error when uploading to Heroku. Would be interested to know how to fix instead of trying a new library

[gupshuprenuka]

I am also facing this issue on Lambda

[chrisweight]

And on Travis CI...

[UncleGus]

To fix this, I went into the node-expat folder in my node_modules folder, then I ran a node-gyp rebuild there. At first it complained about my npm_config_node_gyp variable, which was pointing at the node-gyp package folder itself, so I amended it to point at the bin\node-gyp.js file itself. Like this:
export npm_config_node_gyp=C:\\ProgramData\\nvm\\v8.13.0\\node_modules\\npm\\node_modules\\node_modules\\node-gyp\\bin\\node-gyp.js

[azjgard]

For anyone from Google that come across this issue and is using Webpack:

I encountered this error when trying to deploy some code using the Serverless framework to a Lambda on AWS; the error was being thrown when Webpack was attempting to bundle everything.

I discovered that the problem stemmed from Webpack's inability to bundle native modules. I was able to fix it with two steps:

1. Including the below in my webpack.config.js to tell Webpack that node-expat is an external module that shouldn't be bundled:

module.exports = {
  ...
  externals: ["node-expat"]
};

2. Including the below in my serverless.yml to tell Serverless that node-expat should be packaged into the node_modules included in the deployed .zip file:

custom:
  webpack:
    includeModules:
      forceInclude:
        - node-expat

Replace step 2 with whatever is necessary to make sure that node_modules/node-expat is available to your Node process at runtime, since it won't be in the bundle that Webpack spits out.