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Cover image for Tired Of Relative Imports? Time To Get Rid Of Them!
Ludal ๐Ÿš€
Ludal ๐Ÿš€

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at iamludal.fr

Tired Of Relative Imports? Time To Get Rid Of Them!

At some point in your Javascript developer journey, you've certainly encountered these types of imports:

import Car from '../../../vehicles/car'
import House from '../../../buildings/house'
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And you were probably bothered by the ugliness of them...

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o8doVY3jacRLyrSmI/giphy.gif

But guess what? I'm here as a savior to show you how to get rid of them! (really) ๐Ÿ˜Ž

Ready? Let's go! ๐Ÿ

baseUrl

The simplest way to get rid of these awful imports is by simply editing your jsconfig.json file. If you don't already have one, you can just create it at the root of your project.

Let's complete it with the following keys:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "baseUrl": "."
    }
}
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Now, the most studious ones of you might think: "Compiler options? But JavaScript is not a compiled language!". And you're right! If you want to know why does this key exist, I recommend you to follow this link from the official website of Visual Studio Code.

Now, imagine having the following directory structure:

.
โ”œโ”€โ”€ components
โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ layouts
โ”‚       โ””โ”€โ”€ header.js
โ”œโ”€โ”€ styles
โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ header.css
โ””โ”€โ”€ jsconfig.json
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If you want to include your header.css style file in your header.js file, you can now do it this way:

// header.js
import 'styles/header.css'
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Without this configuration, here's how you would have done it:

// header.js
import '../../styles/header.css'
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Now, no matter how deep you are in your project's architecture, you'll be able to import your files as if you were at the root of your project. ๐Ÿ˜ฒ

And obviously, you'll still able to import them relatively from the current directory you are in!

.
โ”œโ”€โ”€ src
โ”‚   โ”œโ”€โ”€ vehicles
โ”‚   โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ car.js
โ”‚   โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ truck.js
โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ index.js
โ””โ”€โ”€ jsconfig.json
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// index.js
import truck from './vehicles/truck.js'
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https://media.giphy.com/media/oYtVHSxngR3lC/giphy.gif

Paths

Back to our jsconfig.json. You can also add the paths key in order to map an import to a specific folder. This is useful for giving aliases to some folders in your imports.

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "baseUrl": ".",
        "paths": {
            "css/*": ["styles/*"]
        }
    }
}
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Considering the same folder structure we've seen in the previous part, you could now import your styles like this:

// header.js
import 'css/header.css'
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But I wouldn't recommend doing this at all, as this would create inconsistencies between the real folders' names and the aliases โ€” instead, why not simply renaming the actual folder? ๐Ÿคจ

Nevertheless, this option can be useful for folders you often use and that are not at the root of your project. Let's consider the following structure:

.
โ”œโ”€โ”€ assets
โ”‚   โ”œโ”€โ”€ styles
โ”‚   โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ index.css
|โ”€โ”€ src
โ”‚   โ””โ”€โ”€ index.js
โ””โ”€โ”€ jsconfig.json
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We will often use the styles directory to import our styles, and that could be very handy if we could remove the assets prefix, in order to not have to always write this:

import 'assets/styles/index.css'
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In that case, you could add the following to your jsconfig.json:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "baseUrl": ".",
        "paths": {
            "@styles/*": ["assets/styles/*"]
        }
    }
}
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After that, here's how you would import your styles:

import '@styles/index.css'
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The @ is a conventional way to reference a folder-mapping import, in order to differentiate it from a classic import.

TypeScript

Oh, you are using TypeScript? Awesome! Of course you can also use this trick: the only difference is that you won't write those settings inside the jsconfig.json file, but instead, inside...?

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7TKTDn976rzVgky4/giphy.gif

Exactly! Inside the tsconfig.json file. Smart, isn't it? ๐Ÿ˜

Conclusion

That's it! You've now got rid of those awful imports, congratulations! ๐ŸŽ‰

To go further, I would recommend you following this link from the official Visual Studio Code website, in particular to exclude some directories that are not part of the source code.

With that being said, I thank you for reading me all the way through, and I hope you've learned something with this article. ๐Ÿ˜Ž

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6Zt6KHxJTbXCnSvu/giphy.gif

Top comments (17)

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valeriavg profile image
Valeria

While this method does work everywhere for TypeScript, it won't work for JavaScript without a bundler (especially NodeJS).
For NodeJS one could use NODE_PATH=./src node index.js to achieve similar results.

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adamcoster profile image
Adam Coster

This doesn't work for the JavaScript compiled by Typescript either, since the Typescript compiler doesn't rewrite import paths on compile. I ended up switching to Babel with the "Module Resolver" plugin for my Node projects (instead of using tsc) since being able to use path aliases is worth the annoyance of the extra dependency!

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christian102094 profile image
Christian Tapia

Spent several hours trying to configure it for Typescript. A real nightmare!

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valeriavg profile image
Valeria

Did you figure in the end? Otherwise try tsconfig-paths

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Can also be done with Babel, JavaScript also.

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heyprotagonist profile image
Anguram Shanmugam

now this post is perfect๐Ÿ‘

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iamludal profile image
Ludal ๐Ÿš€

Thanks! I'm always using it with React, so I didn't think about this point. ๐Ÿ™

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jcollum profile image
Justin Collum

This appears to be exclusive to VS Code. If so you should state that at the top.

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iamludal profile image
Ludal ๐Ÿš€

You're right! Or with a bundler? I'm using it with React. ๐Ÿค”

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prabhukadode profile image
Prabhu

Really useful

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big78113828 profile image
Big

in Create-React-App you can just edit your .env file and add

'NODE_PATH=src'

, assuming you're starting from the src/ folder.

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kettanaito profile image
Artem Zakharchenko

Path aliases are such a great feature, but setting it up on the TypeScript configuration level is not enough if you aim to reuse it across your devstack. I'm convinced there must be a higher medium to distribute alias settings, and that's why I'm pursuing the ".alias" project that allows you to defined path aliases and reuse them across all your tools (TypeScript, webpack, Jest, etc.):

github.com/open-draft/dotalias

Let me know what you think about it!

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gaurav5430 profile image
Gaurav Gupta

this works, but you also need to change settings in other tools used in your project which need module/path resolution. In my case, I needed to also enable this in webpack, storybook, jest, eslint

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iamludal profile image
Ludal ๐Ÿš€

You're right, I'm using it with React (CRA or Next.js), so I didn't think about it. ๐Ÿ™

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Sarath G

Hello4

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secretguard profile image
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Sarath G

Hello3

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secretguard profile image
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Sarath G

Hello1

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