node.js - ReferenceError: navigator is not defined

Question

I'm getting ReferenceError: navigator is not defined running the following code on node.js:

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition((data) => {
  console.log(data);
});

I assume that the problem is that Navigator.geolocation is a Web API and doesn't work on node. Is there a way to mock the browser and use it on node.js?

Many thanks

Fading

Does this answer your question? require(processing-js) throws Reference Error: Navigator not Found – Blubberhead

What are you trying to do? Get the location of the computer Node.js is running on? Write unit tests for code that is intended to run in a browser (but with tests that run via Node.js)? Something else? – Aglet

Answer 1

Is there a way to mock the browser and use it on node.js?

One library that is useful for mocking Web APIs is browser-env.

import browserEnv from 'browser-env';

Then:

browserEnv(['navigator']);

This pollutes the global namespace, though, so be circumspect in its use.

Vienne

Answer 2

global.navigator worked for me:

global.navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition((data) => {
  console.log(data);
});

Browband

Answer 3

So I created this because analytics does not support node, so it requires conditional importing

import isNode from 'detect-node'
export async function analyticsLogEvents(event, params) {
  if (!isNode) {
    const firebase = await import('firebase/app')
    await import('firebase/analytics')
    firebase.default.analytics().logEvent(event, params)
  }
}

Eipper

Fantastic. Thank you very much. The isNode condition solves a big problem for me re: Next.js initializing route logic in Node (and the same logic being run later by the browser). I was on this stuck for several hours. Really, thanks again. – Underthrust

@JohnCamden no problem, it took me like 2 days to find what was happening in my project because of the complexity between node and libraries and the react rendering, I'm glad it helped! – Eipper

Answer 4

Node.js is a server side technology, which means it can't access the user's geolocation directly.

What you should be asking is how to get geolocation using javascript on the client side, and then simply send that information to your server via Ajax.

More info here: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_geolocation.asp .

There are of course libraries that will ease the use of this.

Valkyrie

Answer 5

Use BrowserEnv. You should get more infomation at https://www.npmjs.com/package/browser-env. Hope can help you!

Cytokinesis

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