Why does the “exports-loader” example in Webpack&#

Webpack provides the example below in its shimming documentation. In the global exports portion of that page, it gives the following example.

webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
    module: {
        rules: [
            {
                test: require.resolve('globals.js'),
                use: exports-loader?file,parse=helpers.parse
            }
        ]
    }
}

./src/globals.js

var file = 'blah.txt';
var helpers = {
    test: function() { console.log('test something'); },
    parse: function() { console.log('parse something'); }
};

But when I attempt to build, I get:

ERROR in ./webpack.config.js
Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'globals.js' in '/workspace/my-app'

Why is globals.js not resolving, and why does the example in their documentation assume it will? Am I missing something? Thanks.

Getting this to work with a global `exports-loader` configuration

I have this working with the following setup:

src/deps.js // this file just declare a global file variable

const file = 'this is the file';

src/app.js // entry point of the webpack bundle. It import's deps.js (even if deps.js does not have an export statement, thanks to export-loader):

import file from './deps.js'
console.log(file);

webpack.config.js // webpack configuration file

module.exports = {
  entry: __dirname + '/src/app.js',
  mode: 'development',
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /deps.js/,
        use: 'exports-loader?file',
      }
    ]
  }
}

package.json // so we can run webpack locally to the project

{
  "name": "exports-loader-test",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "webpack": "node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "exports-loader": "^0.7.0",
    "webpack": "^4.29.6",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.2.3"
  }
}

With this setup, assuming webpack.config.js, package.json and src/ are in the root of the project, do:

$ npm run webpack

To bundle the scripts, then:

$ node dist/main.js to check that the file variable is being loaded (to load this in a browser will do the same).

Getting this to work with an `import` specific configuration.

(this comes from this other answer).

In order to do so, you need to use just the exports-loader, without any further configuration when you load it in the webpack.config.js:

use: 'exports-loader',

And then specify the variables to wrap in an export clause in every import statement:

import file from 'exports-loader?file!./deps.js'

Why the `require.resolve()` syntax is not working?

I really don't know. The test clause expects a regex as far as I know (that's why it is called test in fact, because of the test method of regex's in javascript) and I'm not used to other kind of valid syntaxes. I see that in your snippet:

module.exports = {
    module: {
        rules: [
            {
                test: require.resolve('globals.js'),
                use: exports-loader?file,parse=helpers.parse
            }
        ]
    }
}

The use value does not have string quotes. I wonder if this is broking the config and then you get a misleading error, I don't know. I actually believe you just didn't paste the quotes when copy and pasting to stack overflow.