Description

Currently users of @clerk/nextjs and Next.js 12 (or older) are seeing an error when booting up their app:

error - ./node_modules/@clerk/nextjs/dist/esm/app-router/client/ClerkProvider.js:3:0
Module not found: Can't resolve 'next/navigation'

Import trace for requested module:
./node_modules/@clerk/nextjs/dist/esm/client-boundary/ClerkProvider.js
./node_modules/@clerk/nextjs/dist/esm/components.client.js
./node_modules/@clerk/nextjs/dist/esm/index.js
<path-to-where-they-mount-clerk-provider>

From what I can tell the error must have existed since #1840 was merged. But we only recently got a report about this so hopefully not too many people where impacted 🤞

This only needs to be fixed for v4 (as v5 will drop Next.js 12), so that's why the target branch is release/v4.

Docs PR: clerk/clerk-docs#543

Root cause

The packages/nextjs/src/client-boundary/ClerkProvider.tsx component imports next/compat/router and the ClerkProvider for the App router version of Next.js (which uses next/navigation).

Both imports only got introduced in Next.js 13 so that's why they fail on older versions. webpack tries to resolve these imports, then it fails.

Solution

Dynamic imports! Check if next/compat/router can be required, if not we're on Next.js 12 or older and we can use the ClerkProvider for Pages.

This works on the client-side, but unfortunately not during compilation of the middleware and other parts of Next.js. So we need to tell our users to let webpack ignore these imports as their code paths won't be hit.

Testing

You can test this change yourself by:

1. Clone https://github.com/clerk/clerk-nextjs-pages-quickstart
2. Replace the middleware with

   import { withClerkMiddleware } from "@clerk/nextjs/server";
   import { NextResponse } from "next/server";
   import type { NextRequest } from "next/server";
   
   export default withClerkMiddleware((req: NextRequest) => {
     return NextResponse.next();
   });
   
   export const config = {
     matcher: ['/((?!.+\\.[\\w]+$|_next).*)', '/', '/(api|trpc)(.*)'],
   };

3. Replace next.config.js with

   const webpack = require('webpack');
   
   /** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
   const nextConfig = {
     reactStrictMode: true,
     webpack(config) {
       config.plugins.push(new webpack.IgnorePlugin({ resourceRegExp: /^next\/(navigation|headers|compat\/router)$/ }))
       return config;
     }
   }
   
   module.exports = nextConfig

4. Install packages from this PR, e.g. by using secco

Checklist

• npm test runs as expected.
• npm run build runs as expected.
• (If applicable) JSDoc comments have been added or updated for any package exports
• (If applicable) Documentation has been updated

Type of change

• 🐛 Bug fix
• 🌟 New feature
• 🔨 Breaking change
• 📖 Refactoring / dependency upgrade / documentation
• other:

Packages affected

• @clerk/backend
• @clerk/chrome-extension
• @clerk/clerk-js
• @clerk/clerk-expo
• @clerk/fastify
• gatsby-plugin-clerk
• @clerk/localizations
• @clerk/nextjs
• @clerk/clerk-react
• @clerk/remix
• @clerk/clerk-sdk-node
• @clerk/shared
• @clerk/themes
• @clerk/types
• build/tooling/chore