confluence-helloworld-addon fails to start, can't find atlassian-connect-express

[Gershon Joseph]

I have searched the community and can't find anyone hitting my exact problem, so posting a question here.

I'm on Windows 7. I have installed all the dependencies (Visual Studio, node, npm, sqlite3, python 2.7,...). When I create a clean test app using:
atlas-connect new test
The test app installs and starts without any errors. It even registers will my Confluence dev site successfully.

However, when I follow the Getting Started tutorial at this link:
https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/getting-started/
The app fails to start, with the following exception:

C:\Users\gershon\confluence-helloworld-addon>npm start

> helloworld-addon@0.0.1 start C:\Users\gershon\confluence-helloworld-addon
> node app.js

internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:638
throw err;
^

Error: Cannot find module 'atlassian-connect-express'
at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:636:15)
at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:562:25)
at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:690:17)
at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:25:18)
at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\gershonl\confluence-helloworld-addon\app.js:
13:10)
at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:776:30)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:787:10)
at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:653:32)
at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:593:12)
at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:585:3)
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! helloworld-addon@0.0.1 start: `node app.js`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the helloworld-addon@0.0.1 start script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional log
ging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! C:\Users\gershonl\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\_logs\2019-07-16T12_50_
21_679Z-debug.log

I have tried to reinstall everything and still the same. I noticed when installing the dependencies there are calls to several deprecated items, but assume that's not causing this issue... Anyone know what's wrong here?

I set everything up on my Mac (latest MAC OS X) and have the exact same issue as on Windows. So this issue is repeatable on both Windows 7 and MAC OS 10.01.5.

[Gershon Joseph · Accepted solution]

This is a workaround rather than an answer. Instead of fetching the pre-packaged app from GIT, create a new default app and customise from there.

atlas-connect new <my-app-name>

This approach is documented in detail here.

[Stephen Sifers]

Hello Gershon and welcome to the Community! 

From reviewing your detailed steps and output you’re receiving it might be related to the NPM having an issue when attempting to access “Atlassian-connect-express.” With this said there is a similar post which was resolved by reinstalling NPM. The other post reported the following as working;

npm install --global --production windows-build-tools

Source post: Atlassian Connect Express - Error on startup

Please let us know if this assists in progress forward.

Regards,
Stephen Sifers

[Gershon Joseph]

Hi Stephen and thank you very much for replying.

I worked around my issue on both Windows and Mac by using:

 atlas-connect new <plugin-name>

I then customised the default app as needed according to the getting started tutorial.

Cheers,
Gershon

[Gershon Joseph]

One more note to Stephen's answer. I assume my issue was not with my npm installation, since using atlas-connect worked without reinstalling npm on both mac and windows. This is just an assumption on my part, I have no way to validate my assumption.