Invoking a node module from react component

Question

How do I use Node Modules for example 'lwip' in React component ? This is for an electron application.

Updating the question with Code:

1. This is the react component from which I am trying to invoke another .js file.

button.js

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import resize from '../../node-code/process';

class Button extends React.Component{

    mess(){
        console.log('working');
        resize();
    }

    render(){
        return <button id="imgButton" onClick={this.mess.bind(this)}>Upload Image</button>
    }
}

export default Button

2. This is the other javascript file where I am trying to resize the image.

process.js

var lwip = require('lwip');

export default function(){
    var lwip = require('lwip');
    lwip.open('../../public/img/portrait.jpg', function(err, image){


    image.batch()
        .scale(0.75)          // scale to 75%
        .rotate(45, 'white')  // rotate 45degs clockwise (white fill)
        .crop(200, 200)       // crop a 200X200 square from center
        .blur(5)              // Gaussian blur with SD=5
        .writeFile('../../public/img/output.jpg', function(err){

        });

    });
}

Answer 1

The Node module needs to be executed from the main Electron thread, not the renderer thread on which React runs.

You can run NPM modules in the renderer process, as if you were in the browser, but those modules cannot use the Node.js library since obviously there is no Node in the browser.

To communicate between the main (Node) and renderer (browser) threads you need to use IPC (inter process communication) a system which uses events to send data between threads.

Here's the IPC documentation for Electron.

If you need constant communication between threads you can use the electron-ipc-socket library.