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Discussion on: How to use ES6 import syntax in Node.js

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taufik_nurrohman profile image
Taufik Nurrohman • • Edited

How to make NPM module works both with ES6 and CommonJS:

Create ./index.mjs for ES6 and ./index.js for CommonJS.

// `./index.mjs`
import foo from 'bar';

export function foo() {}
export function bar() {}
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// `./index.js`
const foo = require('bar');

exports.foo = function () {};
exports.bar = function () {};
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In ./package.json file…

{
  "exports": {
    "import": "./index.mjs",
    "require": "./index.js"
  },
  "files": [
    "index.js",
    "index.mjs"
  ],
  "main": "index.mjs"
}
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Example: github.com/taufik-nurrohman/quote

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rsa profile image
Ranieri Althoff •

It seems a terrible idea to duplicate the entirety of the code only because of the two or three first lines.

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taufik_nurrohman profile image
Taufik Nurrohman •

Any better solution? Adding build tool to copy and convert the ES6 script into CommonJS script in the same project is too much. I do this manually since this is not a large project. I can live with that.

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rsa profile image
Ranieri Althoff •

Yes, that's the point of transpilers, just add a build step that converts the code for you instead of doing it manually.

If that's a small project, and it will not be bundled into a web app (i.e. it's a Node package), then just use the CommonJS version. That's what I do in node-argon2.