Babel Inline Import

Babel plugin to add the opportunity to use import with raw/literal content
It is good e.g. for importing *.graphql files into your code.

Examples

Before (without Babel-Inline-Import):

// server.js

// bad syntax highlighting, no syntax checking
const typeDefinitions = `
type Query {
  testString: String
}
schema {
  query: Query
}
`;

graphQLServer({
  schema: [typeDefinitions],
  ...
});

Now (with Babel-Inline-Import):

// /some/schema.graphql
type Query {
  testString: String
}
schema {
  query: Query
}

// server.js
import schema from '/some/schema.graphql';

graphQLServer({
  schema: [schema],
  ...
});

Note: both cases are equivalent and will result in similar code after Babel transpile them. Check How it works section for details.

Install

npm install babel-plugin-inline-import --save-dev

Use

Add a .babelrc file and write:

{
  "plugins": [
    "babel-plugin-inline-import"
  ]
}

or pass the plugin with the plugins-flag on CLI

babel-node myfile.js --plugins babel-plugin-inline-import

By default, Babel-Inline-Import is compatible with the following file extensions:

• .raw
• .text
• .graphql

Customize

If you want to enable different file extensions, you can define them in your .babelrc file

{
  "plugins": [
    ["babel-plugin-inline-import", {
      "extensions": [
        ".json",
        ".sql"
      ]
    }]
  ]
}

How it works

It inserts the content of the imported file directly into the importing file, assigning it to a variable with the same identifier of the import statement, thus replacing the import statement and the file path by its resulting raw content (no parsing occurs).

Caveats

Babel does not track dependency between imported and importing files after the transformation is made. Therefore, you need to change the importing file in order to see your changes in the imported file spread. To overcome this:

• If you are using babel-node or babel-register, you can disable babel cache (BABEL_DISABLE_CACHE=1).
• If you are using webpack with babel-loader, you can use babel-inline-import-loader.

Also make sure that your task runner is watching for changes in the imported file as well. You can see it working here.

Motivate

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