Bundled Node modules

You can use the node_modules folder to bundle Node.js modules with your Foxx service. Note that many third-party libraries written for Node.js or the browser rely on async or filesystem logic which may not be compatible with Foxx.

Bundled node modules are often referred to as dependencies. In ArangoDB this term can often be ambiguous because Foxx also provides a dependency mechanism for linking services together.

Use a tool like yarn or npm to create a package.json file in your service source directory and add node dependencies as you would for any other Node.js application or library:

cd my-foxx-service/
echo '{"private": true}' > package.json
yarn add lodash # or:
npm install --save lodash

Make sure to include the actual node_modules folder in your Foxx service bundle as ArangoDB will not automatically install these dependencies for you. Also keep in mind that bundling extraneous modules like development dependencies may bloat the file size of your Foxx service bundle.

If you are using the Foxx CLI command-line tool, you can exclude individual modules by ignoring them:

npm install --save prettier
foxx ignore '/node_modules/prettier/'
# the 'prettier' folder will now be excluded
# in service bundles generated by foxx-cli
foxx install /my-foxx-service

Keep in mind that both yarn and npm typically also install dependencies of your dependencies to the node_modules folder which you’ll need to ignore as well if you want to exclude these modules from your service bundle.

If you are using the npm package manager, you can use npm install --global-style to force these indirect dependencies to be nested to make them easier to exclude.