Chai Unexpected token when importing

Question

So i have this very very simple dummy test:

import {expect}  from 'chai';

describe('calculate', function () {
    it('add', function () {
        let result = 2 + 5;
        expect(result).equal(7);
    });
});

Here i get the following error when i run it:

(function (exports, require, module, __filename, __dirname) { import { expect } from 'chai';
                                                                     ^

SyntaxError: Unexpected token {

Can anyone tell me whats going on?

Seems like your JS Interpreter does not support ES6 Modules. Do you use NodeJS or WebPack there? — Tracer69, Sep 04 '20 at 08:18
NodeJS does not support ``import`` by default. Look here for further information https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39436322/node-js-syntaxerror-unexpected-token-import — Tracer69, Sep 04 '20 at 08:45
Typescript is not javascript. It gets compiled, and the compiler transforms all ``import`` to ``require`` (Or throws everything in a single file) — Tracer69, Sep 04 '20 at 09:04

adz5A · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-04T14:32:00.760

2

You need to transpile your code to use commonjs imports. You can use babel for such a task, see the docs https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-plugin-transform-modules-commonjs.

Via cli you can run babel --plugins @babel/plugin-transform-modules-commonjs script.js and then simply run your script.

If you don't want to use either transpilation (using babel or whatever) or commonjs you could use a loader such as esm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/esm.

From the docs, after running yarn add esm you can just node -r esm main.js.

edited Sep 04 '20 at 14:32

answered Sep 04 '20 at 08:26

adz5A

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I dont have babel installed yet this is not suppose to run in the browser it is just suppose to be an Nodejs module – Marc Rasmussen Sep 04 '20 at 08:39
babel is not only used for targeting the browser these days. As a matter of fact it can be considered good practice to typecheck your code using typescript and transpile it using babel (we do this on a server side project). Your problem can be solved by using commonjs imports `const { expect } = require("chai")` or something like that, since es6 are still experimental in node – adz5A Sep 04 '20 at 14:27

Chai Unexpected token when importing

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