Module.exports and es6 Import

Question

React with babel. I have this confusion with imports and module.exports. I assume babel when converting the ES6 code to ES5 converts the imports and exports to require and

Answer 1

export { Tiger } would be equivalent to module.exports.Tiger = Tiger.

Conversely, module.exports = Tiger would be equivalent to export default Tiger.

So when you use module.exports = Tiger and then attempt import { Tiger } from './animals' you're effectively asking for Tiger.Tiger.

Answer 2

When module.exports is not set it points to an empty object ({}). When you do module.exports = Tiger, you are telling the runtime the object being exported from that module is the Tiger object (instead of the default {}), which in this case is a function.
Since you want to import that same function, the way to import is using the default import (import tiger from './tiger'). Otherwise, if you want to use named import (import { tiger } from './tiger') you must change the module.exports object or use export keyword instead of module.exports object.

Default import/export:

// tiger.js
module.exports = tiger;
// or
export default function tiger() { ... }

// animal.js
import tiger from './tiger';

Named import/export:

// tiger.js
module.exports = { tiger };
// or
module.exports.tiger = tiger
// or
export const tiger = () => { ... }
// or
export function tiger() => { ... }

// animal.js
import { tiger } from './tiger';

Answer 3

If you would like to import:

module.exports = Tiger

you may use following construction:

import * as Tiger from './animals'

Then it will work.

Another option is changing the export as described by @Matt Molnar but it is only possible if you are the author of the imported code.