FAQ.md

Frequently Asked Questions

Where did the dist folder go?

Starting with version 1.9.0, a minified browser bundle can be obtained from npm CDNs such as unpkg or jsDelivr. The link can be found in the README.md.

In prior versions, the browser bundles were made available in the dist directory. In order to access those, look in the dist folder on the version's GitHub tag, e.g. https://github.com/algorand/js-algorand-sdk/tree/v1.8.1/dist.

Can I host the browser bundle myself?

Yes! If you would instead prefer to host the package yourself, a minified browser bundle can be found in the dist/browser/ folder of the published npm package starting with version 1.9.0.

It says Error: Can't resolve.... in the sdk

This kind of errors is usually seen in Webpack 5 or Vite projects. You will need to install additional polyfill packages.

Webpack 5 projects

Typically, with Webpack 5 you would see:

Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'crypto'
ERROR in ./node_modules/algosdk/dist/browser/algosdk.min.js 7471:55-72

Webpack 5 no longer auto-polyfills some of the node modules used by this sdk. You will have to polyfill them to fix any errors regarding missing modules.

Vite projects

With Vite, you would see:

Uncaught ReferenceError: Buffer is not defined

You will have to install buffer as dependency.

In index.html, add the following:

<script type="module">
  import { Buffer } from 'buffer';
  window.Buffer = Buffer;
</script>

To utilize the Buffer polyfill in production builds, in vite.config.js, add:

import inject from '@rollup/plugin-inject';

export default defineConfig({
  ...,
  build: {
    rollupOptions: {
      plugins: [inject({ Buffer: ['buffer', 'Buffer'] })],
    },
  },
  ...
});

How do I generate the SRI hash of algosdk.min.js?

The SRI hash of algosdk.min.js is the base64 string after sha384- in the integrity attribute of the <script> tag used to import algosdk.min.js. See the instructions to import algosdk in browser. It can be computed as follows after building the project:

cat dist/browser/algosdk.min.js | openssl dgst -sha384 -binary | openssl base64 -A