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cables Documentation  ⟩  Cables Standalone  ⟩  Using NPM

Using NPM

What is NPM?

NPM stands for the node package manager and is a widely used tool to manage dependencies of applications developed in JavaScript. It also features access to a vast collection of libraries written in JavaScript that can (potentially) be used in cables standalone.

Why NPM?

Cables standalone in not being bound to the browser-sandbox anymore and has more direct access to features of the underlying operating system. This makes it possible to you a lot of the packages on npmjs.com in ops. Features like access to the file system, network interfaces, or native binaries opens up a whole new set of possibilities to work with cables.

How do I add a library to my Op?

Once you created or cloned your own Op, you can use any npm package by adding it on the "Manage Op"-Tab. Enter its name as it appears on npmjs.org. So e.g. npm install osc-js becomes osc-js, if you want to add a fixed version to your package add it to the name, like this osc-js@2.4.1.

add npm

The wanted package will be installed into the op's directory into a node_modules folder. This folder should not be shared or added to any repositories, as it might contain operating-system dependent code (and also is usually pretty big...).

Afterward, add the standalone_electron core-lib to the Op. This will make sure that people that end up using this on cables.gl will get a warning that this Op might not work on the web.

add npm

I am getting errors like require() of ES Module or failed to load node module

This likely means that the library/module you are trying to use is either:

  • not packaged to be used in electron/browser
  • uses native modules that need to be precompiled

You can try working around this by putting the precompiled/packaged node_modules folder into the op-dir on your own, but these ops won't be sharable.

How do I use a library in any of my ops?

After you added the library to your op (say you used the osc-js-package from above) you can use op.require to load the library. Here are a few examples from the documentation pages of different libraries and how they translate to cables:

require:

const OSC = require('osc-js')

will become:

const OSC = op.require("osc-js");

default import:

import path from 'path';

will become:

const path = op.require("path");

named import:

import { HfInference } from '@huggingface/inference';

will become:

const hf = op.require("@huggingface/inference");
const HfInference = hf.HfInference;

Does cables standalone come with built-in libraries?

Cables standalone comes with (at least) the native nodejs libraries of the node version that was used to build it, this (currently) includes modules like os, fs, path, http, net and more...

You can use these modules without adding them to the dependencies section in "Manage Op":

const OSC = op.require("os");
const ifaces = os.networkInterfaces();
Found a problem? Edit this file on github and contribute to cables!