FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙•11mo ago

Use Node only for specific actions

As stated here (the screenshot) you can only opt into the node runtime by putting a directive on top of the file. This is not so great (for me at least) if this is the only option to use the node runtime because I only need node for a few (in my specific app one time) and want to group my functions into files by what they are doing. Now that I have to put this node directive on top of the file I have to create to seperate files. notifications-node.ts -> Single function that needs node js notification-convex.ts -> Rest of the code What I would like to see is that you can enable the runtime only for specific functions like that:

export const doSomething = action({
  "use node"
  handler: () => {
    // implementation goes here

    // optionally return a value
    return "success";
  },
});

export const doSomething = action({
  "use node"
  handler: () => {
    // implementation goes here

    // optionally return a value
    return "success";
  },
});

12 Replies

erquhart•11mo ago

The team can answer on whether they're planning on improving this, but I have the same situation, and my convention is to have <file>.ts and <file>Node.ts for keeping things organized. Nothing groundbreaking, but it works. Oh I read the rest of your post and you're doing exactly this lol

FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙OP•11mo ago

Yeah 😆

erquhart•11mo ago

Glad I could help! 😂

FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙OP•11mo ago

I mean it's just quality of life and has not a high priority but would be great to see this

erquhart•11mo ago

I know Next works similarly with client and server directives - have you seen any examples out there of per-function directives like this?

FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙OP•11mo ago

yes, with the server actions you can define the "use server" of the server action inside the server action funtion instead of the top of the file

FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙OP•11mo ago

erquhart•11mo ago

Good example

lee•11mo ago

this is difficult partially because Node and browser/Convex runtimes are different enough that usually you want different imports. If you've got a const crypto = require("crypto") at the top of the file, that file will only work in Node (unless we get very good at tree-shaking). so it may be possible, and we've seen the feature request before, but it's not easy. for more context, what specifically do you need to use Node for? we're always trying to make the Convex default runtime more capable

FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙OP•11mo ago

I'm using the node runtime because I need the web-push library to work which has many packages that are not supported by the convex runtime. https://discord.com/channels/1019350475847499849/1246820030625087613/1247227694106546198 Namely: - util - url - crypto - https - net - tls - assert - stream - buffer - http

lee•11mo ago

cool, thanks for the list! to draw out the example, how would you want to import these libraries if there were per-function "use node"?

FleetAdmiralJakob 🗕 🗗 🗙OP•11mo ago

good question. and i don't have an answer. but maybe it's worth looking at the implementation of react because if I call a server action in a client component react also keeps the imports that are only used server side on the server as far as i know

Use Node only for specific actions

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