404 error on language files in production

[Otuoma Sanya]

I have a strange error on my dspace version 9.1 repository at https://karuspace.karu.ac.ke. The language files are failing to load when in production mode instead returning 404 error. I made the following observations

1. It only occurs when running in production mode. Even when I run the application on my local development machine using `npm run start`, this error still occurs

2. It only occurs on GET requests, eg https://karuspace.karu.ac.ke/search?spc.page=1. Submitting a form which uses POST requests behaves normally.

3. It only seems to occur when accessing /search paths eg https://karuspace.karu.ac.ke/search?spc.page=1

4. The browser appears to be looking for /assets/i18n/en.json which in my case does not exist in either dist/browser/assets/i18n or dist/server/assets/i18n directories. On other sites that are working correctly, these file names are hashed, like en.048a59f6aded4af79bc3c464e8348dfa.json. The files with hashed names also exist on my production system in i18n directories. 

So why is my app looking for en.json instead of en.048a59f6aded4af79bc3c464e8348dfa.json?

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[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi,

I've never seen this behavior before and it cannot be reproduced on "out of the box" DSpace.  For instance, our Demo Site (https://demo.dspace.org/home) is running 9.1 and is not having this issue.

My best guess is that some sort of local customization has accidentally *broken* this language file hashing process.  This hashing process occurs in the webpack build process, and was first introduced in version 7.6.1 via this PR:  https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/2464

So, I'd recommend looking closely at whether you've accidentally modified the webpack build process, or if you are getting any logged errors when you rebuild via "npm run build:prod" (which is also executed via "npm run start").

You also should verify that you are using a supported version of Node.js (18.19+, 20.x or 22.x) and are following the installation documentation at https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC9x/Installing+DSpace

Finally, if none of this helps, then I'd recommend trying to install *out of the box* DSpace locally to verify that it works *without any of your customizations*.  It should.   Assuming it does, then you could try to apply each of your customizations again to see which one results in the i18n failures -- as that can help you narrow down which customization is the problem.

Good luck,

Tim