How to publish a module written in ES6 to NPM?

Question

I was about to publish a module to NPM, when I thought about rewriting it in ES6, to both future-proof it, and learn ES6. I\'ve used Babel to transpile to ES5, and run tests

Answer 1

Deppending on the anatomy of your module, this solution may not work, but if your module is contained inside a single file, and has no dependencies (does not make use of import), using the following pattern you can release your code as it is, and will be able to be imported with import (Browser ES6 Modules) and require (Node CommonJS Modules)

As a bonus, it will be suittable to be imported using a SCRIPT HTML Element.

main.js :

(function(){
    'use strict';
    const myModule = {
        helloWorld : function(){ console.log('Hello World!' )} 
    };

    // if running in NODE export module using NODEJS syntax
    if(typeof module !== 'undefined') module.exports = myModule ;
    // if running in Browser, set as a global variable.
    else window.myModule = myModule ;
})()

my-module.js :

    // import main.js (it will declare your Object in the global scope)
    import './main.js';
    // get a copy of your module object reference
    let _myModule = window.myModule;
    // delete the the reference from the global object
    delete window.myModule;
    // export it!
    export {_myModule as myModule};

package.json :`

    {
        "name" : "my-module", // set module name
        "main": "main.js",  // set entry point
        /* ...other package.json stuff here */
    }

---

To use your module, you can now use the regular syntax ...

When imported in NODE ...

    let myModule = require('my-module');
    myModule.helloWorld();
    // outputs 'Hello World!'

When imported in BROWSER ...

    import {myModule} from './my-module.js';
    myModule.helloWorld();
    // outputs 'Hello World!'

Or even when included using an HTML Script Element...