Aternus / babel-plugin-include

Adds the ability to use `include` as part of the JavaScript syntax. Includes external JavaScript code inline.

@aternus/babel-plugin-include

Adds support for the include() function to the Babel compiler.

Why use this plugin?

A simple way to organize and reuse code.

The goal of this plugin is to allow a "native" way of including JavaScript code inline - at compilation time.

Installation

npm install -D @aternus/babel-plugin-include @babel/core @babel/cli

.babelrc.json / babel.config.json (Recommended)

{
  "plugins": ["@aternus/babel-plugin-include"]
}

Usage

The include() function takes an argument, a file path, e.g. file.js.

Code

main.js

include('welcome.js');
include('stateManager.js');

welcome.js

console.log('Welcome code');

stateManager.js

console.log('State manager code');

Result after compilation with Babel

console.log('Welcome code');
console.log('State manager code');

FAQ

• The include() function takes a single string as an argument. Following arguments are ignored.
• The included file must be a valid JavaScript file. If there are errors the compiler will throw an error.
• The default encoding is assumed to be utf8.
• You can use relative and absolute filenames, and change the root directory in plugin options.

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Programmatic Invocation

Node API

const transformedCode = require('@babel/core').transform(code, {
  plugins: ['@aternus/babel-plugin-include'],
});

CLI

npx babel --plugins @aternus/babel-plugin-include main.js

Integrations

IDEs / TypeScript

The plugin ships with TypeScript types which the IDEs and TypeScript can use to understand the new include syntax capability without you having to take any action.

⚠ Keep in mind that you'll still need to use Babel as the transpiler (this is a babel plugin after all 😅)

ESLint

The plugin ships with an ESLint config you can extend to avoid getting errors about include being undefined.

In your .eslintrc.js:

module.exports = {
  extends: [
    // ...
    './node_modules/@aternus/babel-plugin-include/eslint',
  ],
  // ...
};

⚠ ./node_modules is required to ensure that ESLint won't add "eslint-config" to the package name, resulting in a wrong path.

Options

You can provide an options object to modify the default behavior of the plugin.

{
  plugins: [['@aternus/babel-plugin-include', options]];
}

The following options are available:

Option Name	Type	Default	Notes
root	string	cwd() of the file	The root directory from which all files will be included.
encoding	BufferEncoding	utf-8	The encoding option specifies which encoding to use when including files.

Credits

vihanb for the original package (no longer maintained).

License

Released under the MIT License - see LICENSE.md for details.