node.js websocket module installed but won't work in scripts

Question

I just installed node.js + microsoft visual to be able to install the websocket, it installed fine:

C:\\Users\\Administrator>npm install websocket
npm http G         


        

Answer 1

Note that you can get this error if you installed an NPM module globally (with the -g option) and have not told node to use the global module path to resolve requirements.

On Linux I installed the websocket module globally:

$ sudo npm install -g websocket
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/websocket
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/websocket
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/websocket/-/websocket-1.0.8.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/websocket/-/websocket-1.0.8.tgz

> websocket@1.0.8 install /usr/local/lib/node_modules/websocket
> node install.js

[websocket v1.0.8] Attempting to compile native extensions.
[websocket v1.0.8] Native extension compilation successful!
websocket@1.0.8 /usr/local/lib/node_modules/websocket

Following this I had to export the NODE_PATH environment variable to point to the path mentioned in the above output:

export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules

After this:

$ node
> require('websocket')
{ server: 
   { [Function: WebSocketServer]
     super_: { [Function: EventEmitter] listenerCount: [Function] } },
     ...

Hopefully this helps someone searching for this error message out.