Can't find variable: Buffer

Question

I'm trying to use node modules in my react-native app, and I'm taking the ReactNativify approach here.

I'm all set up now, and I got the crypto package to load in fine. However when I added in eth-lightwallet things have been getting weird.

Every since I added that package in, npm hasn't been installing dependancies of anything. Meaning I've had to add them in manually. And everytime I install a dependency somehow related to eth-lightwallet, that module is uninstalled. Although tedious and annoying, I'm hoping it can shed light onto my current problem.

Right now I'm running into a Can't find variable: Buffer which is being thrown in a util folder in the standard library. I've taken a look at the code and it's accessing Buffer from a global namespace. Thing is, I'm importing Buffer into the global namespace. Here's a look at my global.js

// Inject node globals into React Native global scope.
global.Buffer = require('buffer').Buffer;
global.process = require('process');
global.process.env.NODE_ENV = __DEV__ ? 'development' : 'production';

// Needed so that 'stream-http' chooses the right default protocol.
global.location = {
    protocol: 'file:',
};

// Don't do this in production. You're going to want to patch in
// https://github.com/mvayngrib/react-native-randombytes or similar.
global.crypto = {
    getRandomValues(byteArray) {
        for (let i = 0; i < byteArray.length; i++) {
            byteArray[i] = Math.floor(256 * Math.random());
        }
    },
};

My guess is the standard library is being evaluated before this global is being loaded in, and thus the error is thrown.

Answer 1

In TypeScript I had to import Buffer explicitly.

import { Buffer } from "buffer";

I would have expected that the compiler would complain about Buffer being missing before the import and/or that "source.organizeImports": true would have removed the line when saving the file, but neither were true.

@ehacinom's solution also worked.

Answer 2

I ran npm install buffer and put this at the top of files that needed Buffer:

global.Buffer = global.Buffer || require('buffer').Buffer