Installation

Installing from npm

Pre-built packages will be available on npm:

npm install lindera

[!NOTE] The npm package does not include dictionaries. See Obtaining Dictionaries below. For browser/WASM usage, see lindera-wasm.

Building from Source

Prerequisites

Node.js ^20.17.0 || ^22.13.0 || >= 23.5.0 -- The engines range of lindera-nodejs/package.json (LTS versions recommended)
Rust toolchain -- Install via rustup

The NAPI-RS CLI (@napi-rs/cli), which builds the native addon, needs no global install: it is a devDependency of lindera-nodejs, which npm install installs (see Development Build).

Obtaining Dictionaries

Lindera does not bundle dictionaries with the package. You need to obtain a pre-built dictionary separately.

Download from GitHub Releases

Pre-built dictionaries are available on the GitHub Releases page. Download and extract the dictionary archive to a local directory:

# Example: download and extract the IPADIC dictionary
curl -LO https://github.com/lindera/lindera/releases/download/<version>/lindera-ipadic-<version>.zip
unzip lindera-ipadic-<version>.zip -d /path/to/ipadic

Development Build

Build lindera-nodejs in release mode. npm install also installs the NAPI-RS CLI (@napi-rs/cli) at the version package.json pins, which npm run build runs:

cd lindera-nodejs
npm install
npm run build

For a debug build, run npm run build:debug instead of npm run build.

Or use the project Makefile, which makes the same release build:

make build-lindera-nodejs

Build with Training Support

The train feature enables CRF-based dictionary training functionality. It is enabled by default:

npm run build -- --features train

Feature Flags

Feature	Description	Default
`train`	CRF training functionality	Enabled
`embed-ipadic`	Embed Japanese dictionary (IPADIC) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-unidic`	Embed Japanese dictionary (UniDic) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-sudachidict`	Embed Japanese dictionary (SudachiDict) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-ipadic-neologd`	Embed Japanese dictionary (IPADIC NEologd) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-ko-dic`	Embed Korean dictionary (ko-dic) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-cc-cedict`	Embed Chinese dictionary (CC-CEDICT) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-jieba`	Embed Chinese dictionary (Jieba) into the binary	Disabled
`embed-cjk`	Embed all CJK dictionaries (IPADIC, ko-dic, Jieba) into the binary	Disabled

Multiple features can be combined:

npm run build -- --features "train,embed-ipadic,embed-ko-dic"

[!TIP] If you want to embed a dictionary directly into the binary (advanced usage), enable the corresponding embed-* feature flag and load it using the embedded:// scheme:
const dictionary = loadDictionary("embedded://ipadic");
See Feature Flags for details.

Verifying the Installation

After installation, verify that lindera is available in Node.js:

const lindera = require("lindera");

console.log(lindera.version());

[!NOTE] The lindera npm package's exports map declares types, import, and require conditions, so the package loads from CommonJS (const { TokenizerBuilder } = require("lindera")) and ES modules (import { TokenizerBuilder } from "lindera") alike:

import { TokenizerBuilder } from "lindera";

console.log(typeof TokenizerBuilder); // "function"

Lindera Documentation