I\'ve been looking all over the internet without a clear answer for this.
Currently NodeJS uses only CommonJS syntax to load modules, and if you really want to use the standard ES2015 modules syntax, you either have to transpile it beforehand or use an external module loader at runtime.
Currently I\'m not too positive to use either of those two methods, are the NodeJS maintainers even planning to support ES2015 modules or not?
I haven\'t found an hint at all about this.
At the moment NodeJS 6.x claims to support 96% of the ES2015 features, but there isn\'t any reference to modules (NodeJS ES2105 support link).
Do you know if NodeJS will support these modules out of the box, in the near future?
Update 13 September 2017
NodeJS 8.5.0 has been released with support for mjs files behind a flag:
node --experimental-modules index.mjs
The plan for this is to remove the flag for the v10.0 LTS release.
Update 8 September 2017
NodeJS master branch has been updated with initial support for ESM modules:
https://github.com/nodejs/node/commit/c8a389e19f172edbada83f59944cad7cc802d9d5
This should be available in the latest nightly (this can be installed via nvm to run alongside your existing install):
https://nodejs.org/download/nightly/
And enabled behind the --experimental-modules
flag:
package.json
{
\"name\": \"testing-mjs\",
\"version\": \"1.0.0\",
\"description\": \"\",
\"main\": \"index.mjs\" <-- Set this to be an mjs file
}
Then run:
node --experimental-modules .
--Outdated Information. Kept here for historical purposes--
Update February 2017:
https://medium.com/@jasnell/an-update-on-es6-modules-in-node-js-42c958b890c#.6ye7mtn37
The NodeJS guys have decided that the least bad solution is to use the .mjs
file extension. The takeaway from this is:
In other words, given two files foo.js
and bar.mjs
, using import *
from \'foo\'
will treat foo.js
as CommonJS while import * from \'bar\'
will treat bar.mjs
as an ES6 Module
And as for timelines...
At the current point in time, there are still a number of
specification and implementation issues that need to happen on the ES6
and Virtual Machine side of things before Node.js can even begin
working up a supportable implementation of ES6 modules. Work is in
progress but it is going to take some time — We’re currently looking
at around a year at least.
Update October 2016:
One of the developers on Node.JS recently attended a TC-39 meeting and wrote up a superb article on the blockers to implementing for Node.JS:
https://hackernoon.com/node-js-tc-39-and-modules-a1118aecf95e
The basic take-away from that is:
- ES Modules are statically analyzed, CommonJS are evaluated
- CommonJS modules allow for monkey-patching exports, ES Modules currently do not
- It\'s difficult to detect what is an ES Module and what is CommonJS without some form of user input, but they are trying.
*.mjs
seems the most likely solution, unless they can accurately detect an ES Module without user-input
-- Original Answer --
This has been a hot potato for quite some time. Bottom line is that yes, Node will eventually support the ES2015 syntax for importing/exporting modules - most likely when the spec for loading modules is finalized and agreed upon.
Here is a good overview of what\'s holding NodeJS up. Essentially, they need to make sure that the new spec works for Node which is primarily conditional, synchronous loading and also HTML which is primarily asynchronous.
Nobody knows for sure right now, but I imagine Node will support import/export
for static loading, in addition to the new System.import
for dynamic loading - while still keeping require
for legacy code.
Here\'s a few proposals on how Node might achieve this:
- In defense of .js
- .mjs modules