Outdated apglib dependency breaks compatibility with modern JS environments

[kelkes]

It seems that digital-link.js depends on an outdated version of the apglib library, which no longer works in modern JavaScript environments (such as Node 18+, Node 20+, ESM-based builds, or browser bundlers like Vite and Webpack 5).

As a result, importing or using digital-link.js leads to runtime errors like:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'decode')

This makes the library effectively unusable in modern setups.

I’m opening this issue here because the issue board of the digital-link.js repository itself appears to be closed.

Although the project has not been updated in some time, digital-link.js remains a valuable implementation of the GS1 Digital Link standard (for validation of user input). It would be great to know if there are any plans to revisit or modernize the codebase so the community can continue using it in modern environments.

[mgh128]

Hi David @kelkes , I've just e-mailed @domguinard and @clementh59 as the developers of https://github.com/gs1/digital-link.js in case they didn't see this issue already. Hoping that they can adjust to use the latest version of https://github.com/ldthomas/apg-js2-lib so that the toolkit at https://github.com/gs1/digital-link.js becomes usable again. There have also been some recent updates to the ABNF grammar published in https://ref.gs1.org/standards/digital-link/uri-syntax/ so it's probably a good idea if they can also update it to use the latest grammar. I could help them in extracting that into a text file, if that helps to share the load.

[kelkes]

Sounds good! Please let me know if i can help somewhere.

[kelkes]

Hey, any update on that? I am willing to help if needed.