Proposal

Non-url imports could be prefixed with e.g. /ESM/ to create a url. This would allow module resolution to be performed server side. For imports from an ESM module this would have to be

Proposed usage

import React from 'react' // Resolves to the url "/ESM/react"

(An incomplete list of) working modules

For now, React does not work with this module, there are however several modules that I've found work fine.

• preact (through the module-field)
• left-pad (through module.exports compat mode)
• mobx (through the module-field)

Non-working modules

• React (uses require within the main file)
• mobx-react (imports other modules. Would work with this proposal)

serve-esm

This is an experimental module for integrating the ESM modules with node_modules. It is not complete, as that would require transpilation. It is intended as a proposal for how module loading without a prefix could be resolved server-side instead of increasing complexity on the frontend. A simple prefix /ESM/ is added before modules that you wish to import

A note on this fork

This is a fork of the serve project. It adds support for node_modules, with some important caveats. A module must be imported like this:

// Import preact by using the module field in package.json
import { h, Component } from '/ESM/preact'

There is also support for module.exports.

// Import left-pad by using the main field in package.json
// and exporting module.exports
import leftPad from '/ESM/left-pad'

There is however no support for transitive imports or requires.

// This will fail because of transitive imports
import mobxReact from '/ESM/mobx-react'

Usage

Install it:

npm install -g serve-esm

And run this command in your terminal:

serve-esm [options] <path>

More info

See The original repo for more usage information.