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Export and import modules in ES6

In ECMAScript 6 there’s a couple of new ways of importing and exporting modules that might look a bit different and unusual at first. It’s really very simple once you get your eyes used to it.

Sidenote - running these examples

If you want to read the code - skip this. If you want to run it - do the following steps.

In order to run these examples, on Node, we need to use Babel Node.

1. Create a package.json file with npm init -y

2. Install the babel-packages npm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-env

3. Copy this

   {
     "presets": ["env"]
   }
   

   Create a file with that content with pbpaste > .babelrc

4. Add a start script in the package.json like this: "start": "npx babel-node coolFuncs.js" , using the namings in this example

5. Run the examples with npm start

Default export - one per file

Imagine that we have a file with functions (coolFuncs.js) that contains the following:

function coolFunction() {return 'Pretty fly for a rabbi!'};

export default coolFunction;

Note that there can only be one thing exported default per module.

That last part means that we can import it in another file (coolFuncsClient.js) like this:

import funcs from 'coolFuncs';

console.log(funcs());

We can import this under whatever name I want; import f from 'coolFuncs' would also work (calling it with f() in that case)

Exporting classes

We can export stuff that is not a simple function too. For example like this

class Person {

  constructor(name, age) {
    this.name = name;
    this.age = age;
  }

  getAge() { return this.age }
}

export default Person

In that case, we can import and use it like this:

import Person from './coolFuncs';

const p = new Person('Marcus', 46);
console.log(p.get());

Named exports

There can only be one export but there can be many named exports, in addition.

I’ve added a few more functions to the original coolFuncs.js

function coolFunction () { return 'Pretty fly for a rabbi!' };
export function coolerFunction () { return 'Just eat it!' };
export function coolestFunction () { return 'Living in an Amish paradise' };

export default coolFunction;

Notice that we have several exports before two functions, but only one export default

We can now import those functions using the names like this:

import f from './coolFuncs';
import { coolerFunction } from './coolFuncs';
import { coolestFunction } from './coolFuncs';

console.log(f());
console.log(coolerFunction());
console.log(coolestFunction());

Or, we can be fancy, and import everything on one line using EcmaScript 6 destructuring:

import f, { coolerFunction, coolestFunction} from './coolFuncs'

console.log(f());
console.log(coolerFunction());
console.log(coolestFunction());

That first part, outside the curly braces, is the default import that might or might not be there.

Summary - a React example

This type of exporting and importing happens a lot in modern JavaScript / ECMAScript 6. I hope you now understand what is going on better.

As a final repetition - let’s review some React code, that makes use of these features. Here’s a fresh App.js, created with create-react-app. I’m only including some parts of it since just a few lines are interesting for this repetition:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import logo from './logo.svg';
import './App.css';

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    // code here
  }
}

export default App;

• On line 1 we are importing React and then something called Component
  • React is outside the curly and hence an import of an export default the react package is exporting.
    • We could have called it anything, but chose the name React, but Mmmmmreact would work just as good, as long as we are using that name to refer to the default exported functionality.
  • We are also importing Component that is a named export from the react package
    • This has to be called Component and Compontent will fail miserably, since the react package doesn’t expose anything called Compontent
    • Once this is imported we can use it in our code, see line 5 class App extends Component {, as an example.
• On the very last line we, in our turn are export default App
  • meaning that someone can import this with `import nameHere from ‘./App’
  • This is what the React framework probably does before it starts to call the methods on our class, that pesky render method for example.

I hope this makes this all a bit clearer.