web3 not working as expected in Parity

Question

I have a recurring problem with web3. I follow the instructions on this page: https://github.com/paritytech/parity/wiki/Basic-Usage

Where it says "Node.js CLI Console" and instead of getting the expected results, this is the end of what I see:

     { [Function: send]
        method: [Object],
        request: [Function: bound ],
        call: 'shh_getSymKey' },
     deleteSymKey: 
      { [Function: send]
        method: [Object],
        request: [Function: bound ],
        call: 'shh_deleteSymKey' },
     newMessageFilter: 
      { [Function: send]
        method: [Object],
        request: [Function: bound ],
        call: 'shh_newMessageFilter' },
     getFilterMessages: 
      { [Function: send]
        method: [Object],
        request: [Function: bound ],
        call: 'shh_getFilterMessages' },
     deleteMessageFilter: 
      { [Function: send]
        method: [Object],
        request: [Function: bound ],
        call: 'shh_deleteMessageFilter' },
     post: 
      { [Function: send]
        method: [Object],
        request: [Function: bound ],
        call: 'shh_post' } },
  bzz: 
   Bzz {
     givenProvider: null,
     currentProvider: null,
     isAvailable: [Function],
     upload: [Function],
     download: [Function] } }
> web3.eth.blockNumber
undefined
> 

Does anyone recognize this and if so what could I be missing? I have tried installing web3 globally as root too but the result is the same.

Answer 1

The problem was the version of web3 installed by default is v1.0 beta is not compatible with the wiki pages.

Try npm install [email protected] to force the installation of the stable version.