Error with Firebase on Electron app: Failed to load gRPC - firebase

Question

I'm building an Electron app, and in the renderer.js file, I'm using Firebase Admin to get Firestore data. However, whenever I run it, it returns this error in the logs..
Error: Failed to load gRPC binary module because it was not installed for the current system
Expected directory: electron-v2.0-darwin-x64-unknown
Found: [node-v48-darwin-x64-unknown]
This problem can often be fixed by running "npm rebuild" on the current system
I tried to run "npm rebuild", but it still didn't fix it.
I also tried updating Firebase Admin and gRPC.
Here is the code from the renderer.js file...
// This file is required by the index.html file and will
// be executed in the renderer process for that window.
// All of the Node.js APIs are available in this process.
const admin = require('firebase-admin');
var serviceAccount = require('./credentials.json');
admin.initializeApp({
credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
databaseURL: "https://mytestapp.firebaseio.com"
});
var db = admin.firestore();
const settings = {
timestampsInSnapshots: true
};
db.settings(settings);
function LoadList() {
db.collection("Orders").get().then(function(Collection){
Collection.forEach(function(OrderDoc){
console.log(OrderDoc.id)
})
}).catch(function(err){
console.error(err);
});
}
document.querySelector('#ListSec').addEventListener('click', LoadOrderList)
Any ideas? I've been trying to solve this for hours, but can't seem to figure it out.

Answer 1

That error message indicates that gRPC was installed for Node, not for Electron. Electron has a different binary interface, so binary modules like gRPC need to be installed specifically for Electron. You can generally do this just by running npm rebuild --runtime=electron --target=2.0.0 (modified to match the version of Electron you want to use).

Answer 2

The original answer by #murgatroid99 was helpful at the time, and a postinstall command worked great up until electron v7, where the issue returned.
For anyone else who comes across this issue, I've found a better solution:
the electron-rebuild package
npm install electron-rebuild --save-dev
Run it using
npx electron-rebuild
Or, add it as a postinstall command
{
...
"scripts": {
"postinstall": "electron-rebuild"
},
...
}
Further information is in the official Electron Documentation