After upgrading cordova version from 8.x.x to 9.0.0 cordova build is failing

[bandhavya]

Bug Report

On updating the cordova to 9.0.0 version, cordova build is failing with the below error

Problem

Unable to load PlatformApi from platform. Error: Cannot find module 'properties-parser' Unhandled error. (The platform "android" does not appear to be a valid cordova platform. It is missing API.js. android not supported.)

What is expected to happen?

What does actually happen?

Information

Command or Code

Environment, Platform, Device

Version information

Checklist

• I searched for existing GitHub issues
• I updated all Cordova tooling to most recent version
• I included all the necessary information above

[breautek]

You may need to also update cordova-android.

You can do so by running the following commands:

cordova platform remove android
cordova platform add android@latest

The latest cordova-android version as of writing is 8.1.0

[bandhavya]

@breautek
I have used [email protected]
Still this issue persists.

[brody4hire]

I wonder if something may have gone wrong on your file system (this happened to me once).

I recommend that you try the following:

• Create a fresh, brand new Cordova project elsewhere in your file system and try running it on Android
• Then start with a fresh copy of your project elsewhere in your file system, with no plugins or platforms included, then add and run the android platform.

I do think it would be good if Cordova could make this issue easier to troubleshoot (somehow).

[bandhavya]

@brodybits , @breautek
I got to know the root cause of this issue.

Steps to replicate :

1. create a sample cordova app
2. add platform using 'cordova platform add android'
3. cordova build

Build will be successfull. Now go to app folder and check package.json

{
"dependencies": {
    "cordova-android": "^8.0.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "cordova-plugin-whitelist": "^1.3.4"
  },
  "cordova": {
    "plugins": {
      "cordova-plugin-whitelist": {}
    },
    "platforms": [
      "android"
    ]
  }
}

Next remove platforms, plugins, package.json, package-lock.json, node_modules folders

and try to perform step 2 and 3.
If build passes, then try to delete the above mentioned folders and repeat step 2 and 3.

You will see this issue.
Now check the package.json file

It just contains below json

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "cordova-plugin-whitelist": "^1.3.4"
  },
  "cordova": {
    "plugins": {
      "cordova-plugin-whitelist": {}
    },
    "platforms": [
      "android"
    ]
  }
}

This json is not including dependencies key, whereas build success contains the dependecies key with cordova-android set in it.

As dependencies is not in the package.json file, cordova build is failing with error
Unable to load PlatformApi from platform. Error: Cannot find module 'properties-parser'

This issue can be avoid by add cordova-android to dependencies in the package.json
or just by executing cmd line 'npm install [email protected]' will add the dependencies to package.json

[brody4hire]

The package.json file is now required for Cordova to work.

I think we should update Cordova to check for the required configuration in package.json and show a more useful error message in case it is missing.

[bandhavya]

@brodybits
Yes. Cordova has to handle this

[ferrinweb]

I solved this problem by upgrading the nodejs version to the latest!
The specific reason is that the node version required by fs-extra must be greater than 10.

[newuser44]

Thanks google-- I'm here.
So I have been dealing with for half a day. Upgraded Cordova from 8 to 9.0. I have to manually add I think I'm up to 20 or more modules now.
Both adding and removing needed different modules and now building android is complaining.

Failed to instantiate ProjectBuilder builder: Error: Cannot find module 'dot-prop'
Cannot find module 'shebang-regex'
Cannot find module 'minimatch'
Cannot find module 'abbrev'

[breautek]

Thanks google-- I'm here.
So I have been dealing with for half a day. Upgraded Cordova from 8 to 9.0. I have to manually add I think I'm up to 20 or more modules now.
Both adding and removing needed different modules and now building android is complaining.

Failed to instantiate ProjectBuilder builder: Error: Cannot find module 'dot-prop'
Cannot find module 'shebang-regex'
Cannot find module 'minimatch'
Cannot find module 'abbrev'

You shouldn't need to manually add any dependencies, but it is possible that you're using an out-dated/unsupported version of cordova-android

The latest CLI is version 10, and the latest cordova-android version is 9.1.0. I'd try first upgrading to the latest CLI and then re-adding the cordova-android platform.

If cordova platform remove android doesn't work for whatever reason, you can do the following:

rm -r plugins
rm -r platforms
rm -r node_modules
rm package-lock.json
npm install
cordova platform add android@latest

It's also recommended to use the latest available release of whatever major of Node you're using. Refer to the table below:

NodeJS Major	Latest Version
10.x	10.24.1
12.x	12.22.1
14.x	14.16.1

Odd major versions of Node (e.g: 11.x, 13.x, 15.x) is not supported. They may or may not work.

There doesn't appear to be an actual issue here related to cordova-cli other than aforementioned issue with detecting what is a valid cordova project in general to provide better error feedback. There is a ticket for this discussion apache/cordova#155 therefore I'll be closing this issue.