Why is Cheerio Unavailable in n8n v1.75.x and Causing a 'toString' Error?

It appears that with v1.75.x the Code node is no longer bundling (or “exposing”) Cheerio the way it did before. In v1.74.3 your code would run even though the linter produced a warning, but starting with 1.75.0 the Code node can’t resolve Cheerio correctly and ends up throwing the runtime error:

  Cannot assign to read only property ‘toString’ of object ‘#’

This change is a regression that was introduced in 1.75.x. The recommended workarounds until an official fix is released are:

• Explicitly include Cheerio in your environment. For example, if you’re running n8n in Docker you can create a custom image that adds Cheerio as a dependency (using npm or yarn) so that when your Code node calls require('cheerio') it is available.

• Downgrade temporarily. If modifying your Docker image isn’t ideal right now, you can revert to v1.74.3 where your code runs as expected.

If you choose to build a custom Docker image, a minimal example in your Dockerfile might look like this:

DOCKERFILECopied
FROM n8nio/n8n:1.75.2
RUN npm install cheerio

Then rebuild and run your container based on this image so your Code node finds the Cheerio package at runtime.

Since this regression wasn’t present in v1.74.3 and is causing runtime errors in v1.75.x, it’s best to check the n8n GitHub repository or community forum for updates regarding an official fix. In the meantime, one of the above workarounds should allow you to continue using your workflow code with Cheerio.

Hope that helps!