SyntaxError Cannot use import statement outside a module

Question

I ve got an ApolloServer project that s giving me trouble  so I thought I might update it and ran into issues when using the latest Babel  My  quot index js quot  is  require  dotenv   config   import  startServer  from    server  startServer    And when I run it I get the error SyntaxError  Cannot use import statement outside a module  First I tried doing things to convince TPTB  that this was a module  with no success   So I changed the  quot import quot  to a  quot require quot  and this worked  But now I have about two dozen  quot imports quot  in other files giving me the same error   I m sure the root of my problem is that I m not even sure what s complaining about the issue  I sort of assumed it was Babel 7  since I m coming from Babel 6 and I had to change the presets  but I m not 100  sure  Most of what I ve found for solutions don t seem to apply to straight Node  Like this one here  ES6 module Import giving  quot Uncaught SyntaxError  Unexpected identifier quot  Says it was resolved by adding  quot type module quot  but this would typically go in the HTML  of which I have none  I ve also tried using my project s old presets   quot presets quot     quot es2015 quot    quot stage-2 quot     quot plugins quot       But that gets me another error   quot Error  Plugin Preset files are not allowed to export objects  only functions  quot  UPDATE  Here are the dependencies I started with   quot dependencies quot      quot  babel polyfill quot    quot  7 6 0 quot    quot apollo-link-error quot    quot  1 1 12 quot    quot apollo-link-http quot    quot  1 5 16 quot    quot apollo-server quot    quot  2 9 6 quot    quot babel-preset-es2015 quot    quot  6 24 1 quot

User · Answer

According to the official doc  https   nodejs org api esm html esm code import code statements       import statements are permitted only in ES modules  For similar functionality in CommonJS  see import      To make Node treat your file as a ES module you need to  https   nodejs org api esm html esm enabling     add  type    module  to package json add  --experimental-modules  flag to the node call

User · Answer

Step 1 yarn add esm  or npm i esm --save  Step 2 package json    quot scripts quot          quot start quot    quot node -r esm src index js quot        Step 3 nodemon --exec npm start

User · Answer

I had this problem in a fledgling Express API project   The offending server code in src server server js   import express from  express   import  initialDonationItems  initialExpenditureItems  from    DemoData    const server   express     server get   api expenditures    req  res    gt      res type  json      res send initialExpenditureItems        server get   api donations    req  res    gt      res type  json      res send initialDonationItems        server listen 4242       gt  console log  Server is running          Here were my dependencies        name    contributor-api      version    0 0 1      description    A Node backend to provide storage services      scripts          dev-server    nodemon --exec babel-node src server server js --ignore dist         test    jest tests          license    ISC      dependencies           babel core     7 9 6         babel node     7 8 7        babel-loader     8 1 0        express     4 17 1        mysql2     2 1 0        sequelize     5 21 7        sequelize-cli     5 5 1          devDependencies          jest     25 5 4        nodemon     2 0 3          And here was the runner that threw the error   nodemon --exec babel-node src server server js --ignore dist   This was frustrating  as I had a similar Express project that worked fine   The solution was firstly to add this dependency   npm install  babel preset-env   And then to wire it in using a babel config js in the project root   module exports       presets     babel preset-env         I don t fully grok why this works  but I copied it from an authoritative source  so I am happy to stick with it

User · Answer

I had this issue when I was running migration Its es5 vs es6 issue Here is how I solved it I run npm install  babel register  and add require  quot  babel register quot    at the top of my  sequelizerc file my and go ahead to run my sequelize migrate  This is applicable to other things apart from sequelize babel does the transpiling

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Just I want to add something to make your import work and avoid other issues like modules not working in node js  Just note that  With ES6 modules you can not yet import directories  Your import should look like this   import fs from       node modules file-system file-system js

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In my case  I think the problem is in the standard node executable  node target ts I replaced it with nodemon and surprisingly it worked  The way using the standard executable  runner   node target ts  The way using the nodemon executable  runner   nodemon target ts  Do not forget to install nodemon with npm install nodemon  P NOTE  this works amazing for development  But  for runtime  you may execute node with the compiled js file

User · Answer

In Case your running nodemon for the node version 12  use this command  server js is the  quot main quot  inside package json file  replace it with relevant file inside your package json file nodemon --experimental-modules server js

User · Answer

in the package json write    quot type quot    quot module quot    it fixed my problem  I had the same problem

User · Answer

Recently have the issue  The fix which work for me was to added this to babel config json in the plugins section   quot  babel plugin-transform-modules-commonjs quot          quot allowTopLevelThis quot   true       quot loose quot   true       quot lazy quot   true        I had some imported module with    and the error  quot cannot use import outside a module quot

User · Answer

simple just change it to   const uuidv1   require  uuid    it will work fine

User · Answer

I had the same problem when I started to used babel    But later  I had a solution    I haven t had the problem anymore so far    Currently  Node v12 14 1    babel node     7 8 4    I use babel-node and nodemon to execute  node is fine as well    package json    start    nodemon --exec babel-node server js  debug    babel-node debug server js    note  server js is my entry file  you can use yours  launch json When you debug  you also need to config your launch json file   runtimeExecutable      workspaceRoot  node modules  bin babel-node    note  plus runtimeExecutable into the configuration  Of course  with babel-node  you also normally need and edit another file  such as babel config js  babelrc file

User · Answer

I had the same issue and the following has fixed it  using node 12 13 1     Change  js files extension to  mjs Add --experimental-modules flag upon running your app  Optional  add    type    module  in your package json   more info  https   nodejs org api esm html

User · Answer

Verify that you have the latest version of Node installed  or  at least 13 2 0    Then do one of the following  as described in the documentation  Option 1 In the nearest parent package json file  add the top-level  quot type quot  field with a value of  quot module quot   This will ensure that all  js and  mjs files are interpreted as ES modules  You can interpret individual files as CommonJS by using the  cjs extension     package json      quot type quot    quot module quot     Option 2 Explicitly name files with the  mjs extension  All other files  such as  js will be interpreted as CommonJS  which is the default if type is not defined in package json

User · Answer

This error also comes when you run the command node filename ts  and not node filename js  To simply put  with node command we will have to run the JavaScript file  filename js  and not the TypeScript file unless we are using a package like ts-node

User · Answer

I ran into the same issue and it s even worse  I needed both  quot import quot  and  quot require quot   Some newer ES6 modules works only with import  Some CommonJS works with require   Here is what worked for me   Turn your js file into  mjs as suggested in other answers   quot require quot  is not defined with ES6 module  so you can define it this way  import   createRequire   from  module  const require   createRequire import meta url    Now  require  can be used in the usual way   Use import for ES6 modules and require for commonJS    Some useful links   node js s own documentation  difference between import and require  Mozilla has some nice documentation about import

User · Answer

If anyone is running into this issue with Typescript  the key to solving it for me was changing      quot target quot    quot esnext quot        quot module quot    quot esnext quot    to      quot target quot    quot esnext quot        quot module quot    quot commonjs quot    In my tsconfig json  I was under the impression  quot esnext quot  was the  quot best quot   but that was just a mistake

User · Answer

Tried with all the methods but nothing worked I got one reference from git hub  To use type script imports with nodejs  i installed below packages  1  npm i typescript  2  npm i ts-node  Won t require type  module in package json E g      quot name quot    quot my-app quot      quot version quot    quot 0 0 1 quot      quot description quot    quot  quot      quot scripts quot                 quot dependencies quot          quot knex quot    quot  0 16 3 quot        quot pg quot    quot  7 9 0 quot        quot ts-node quot    quot  8 1 0 quot        quot typescript quot    quot  3 3 4000 quot

User · Answer

My solution was to include babel-node path while running nodemon as follows   nodemon node modules  bin babel-node index js   you can add in your package json script as    debug  nodemon node modules  bin babel-node index js   NOTE  My entry file is index js replace it with your entry file  many have app js server js

User · Answer

just add --presets   babel preset-env    e g   babel-node --trace-deprecation --presets   babel preset-env    yourscript js  OR  in babel config js  module exports       presets     babel preset-env

User · Answer

For those who were as confused as I was when reading the answers  in your package json file  add  quot type quot    quot module quot  in the upper level as show below       quot name quot    quot my-app quot      quot version quot    quot 0 0 0 quot      quot type quot    quot module quot      quot scripts quot

User · Answer

First we ll install  babel cli   babel core and  babel preset-env    npm install --save-dev  babel cli  babel core  babel preset-env  Then we ll create a  babelrc file for configuring babel    touch  babelrc  This will host any options we might want to configure babel with       quot presets quot     quot  babel preset-env quot      With recent changes to babel  you will need to transpile your ES6 before node can run it  So  we ll add our first script  build  in package json   quot scripts quot        quot build quot    quot babel index js -d dist quot     Then we ll add our start script in package json   quot scripts quot        quot build quot    quot babel index js -d dist quot      replace index js with your filename    quot start quot    quot npm run build  amp  amp  node dist index js quot     Now let s start our server    npm start

[javascript] SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

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