import

import defaultExport from "module-name";
import * as name from "module-name";
import { export1 } from "module-name";
import { export1 as alias1 } from "module-name";
import { default as alias } from "module-name";
import { export1, export2 } from "module-name";
import { export1, export2 as alias2, /* … */ } from "module-name";
import { "string name" as alias } from "module-name";
import defaultExport, { export1, /* … */ } from "module-name";
import defaultExport, * as name from "module-name";
import "module-name";

defaultExport

Name that will refer to the default export from the module. Must be a valid JavaScript identifier.

module-name

The module to import from. Only single quoted and double quoted string literals are allowed. The evaluation of the specifier is host-specified. Most hosts align with browsers and resolve the specifiers as URLs relative to the current module URL (see import.meta.url). Node, bundlers, and other non-browser environments often define their own features on top of this, so you should find documentation for them to understand the exact rules. The module specifier resolution section also has more information.

name

Name of the module object that will be used as a kind of namespace when referring to the imports. Must be a valid JavaScript identifier.

exportN

Name of the exports to be imported. The name can be either an identifier or a string literal, depending on what module-name declares to export. If it is a string literal, it must be aliased to a valid identifier.

aliasN

Names that will refer to the named imports. Must be a valid JavaScript identifier.

The "module-name" may be followed by a set of import attributes, starting with the with keyword.

import declarations can only be present in modules, and only at the top-level (i.e. not inside blocks, functions, etc.). If an import declaration is encountered in non-module contexts (for example, <script> tags without type="module", eval, new Function, which all have "script" or "function body" as parsing goals), a SyntaxError is thrown. To load modules in non-module contexts, use the dynamic import syntax instead.

All imported bindings cannot be in the same scope as any other declaration, including let, const, class, function, var, and import declaration.

import declarations are designed to be syntactically rigid (for example, only string literal specifiers, only permitted at the top-level, all bindings must be identifiers), which allows modules to be statically analyzed and linked before getting evaluated. This is the key to making modules asynchronous by nature, powering features like top-level await.

There are four forms of import declarations:

• Named import: import { export1, export2 } from "module-name";
• Default import: import defaultExport from "module-name";
• Namespace import: import * as name from "module-name";
• Side effect import: import "module-name";

Below are examples to clarify the syntax.

Named import

Given a value named myExport which has been exported from the module my-module either implicitly as export * from "another.js" or explicitly using the export statement, this inserts myExport into the current scope.

import { myExport } from "/modules/my-module.js";

You can import multiple names from the same module.

import { foo, bar } from "/modules/my-module.js";

You can rename an export when importing it. For example, this inserts shortName into the current scope.

import { reallyReallyLongModuleExportName as shortName } from "/modules/my-module.js";

A module may also export a member as a string literal which is not a valid identifier, in which case you must alias it in order to use it in the current module.

// /modules/my-module.js
const a = 1;
export { a as "a-b" };

import { "a-b" as a } from "/modules/my-module.js";

Default import

Default exports need to be imported with the corresponding default import syntax. This version directly imports the default:

import myDefault from "/modules/my-module.js";

Since the default export doesn't explicitly specify a name, you can give the identifier any name you like.

It is also possible to specify a default import with namespace imports or named imports. In such cases, the default import will have to be declared first. For instance:

import myDefault, * as myModule from "/modules/my-module.js";
// myModule.default and myDefault point to the same binding

or

import myDefault, { foo, bar } from "/modules/my-module.js";

Importing a name called default has the same effect as a default import. It is necessary to alias the name because default is a reserved word.

import { default as myDefault } from "/modules/my-module.js";

Namespace import

The following code inserts myModule into the current scope, containing all the exports from the module located at /modules/my-module.js.

import * as myModule from "/modules/my-module.js";

Here, myModule represents a namespace object which contains all exports as properties. For example, if the module imported above includes an export doAllTheAmazingThings(), you would call it like this:

myModule.doAllTheAmazingThings();

myModule is a sealed object with null prototype. The default export available as a key called default. For more information, see module namespace object.

Import a module for its side effects only

Import an entire module for side effects only, without importing anything. This runs the module's global code, but doesn't actually import any values.

import "/modules/my-module.js";

This is often used for polyfills, which mutate the global variables.

Import declarations are hoisted. In this case, that means that the identifiers the imports introduce are available in the entire module scope, and their side effects are produced before the rest of the module's code runs.

myModule.doAllTheAmazingThings(); // myModule.doAllTheAmazingThings is imported by the next line

import * as myModule from "/modules/my-module.js";

The ECMAScript specification does not define how module specifiers are resolved and leaves it to the host environment (e.g. browsers, Node.js, Deno). Browser behavior is specified by the HTML spec, and this has become the de facto baseline for all environments.

There are three types of specifiers widely recognized, as implemented by the HTML spec, Node, and many others:

• Relative specifiers that start with /, ./, or ../, which are resolved relative to the current module URL.
• Absolute specifiers that are parsable URLs, which are resolved as-is.
• Bare specifiers that are not one of the above.

The most notable caveat for relative specifiers, especially for people familiar with the CommonJS conventions, is that browsers forbid one specifier to implicitly resolve to many potential candidates. In CommonJS, if you have main.js and utils/index.js, then all of the following will import the "default export" from utils/index.js:

// main.js
const utils = require("./utils"); // Omit the "index.js" file name
const utils = require("./utils/index"); // Omit only the ".js" extension
const utils = require("./utils/index.js"); // The most explicit form

On the web, this is costly because if you write import x from "./utils", the browser needs to send requests to utils, utils/index.js, utils.js, and potentially many other URLs until it finds an importable module. Therefore, in the HTML spec, the specifier by default can only be a URL resolved relative to the current module URL. You cannot omit the file extension or the index.js file name. This behavior has been inherited by Node's ESM implementation, but it is not a part of the ECMAScript specification.

Note that this does not mean that import x from "./utils" never works on the web. The browser still sends a request to that URL, and if the server can respond with the correct content, the import will succeed. This requires the server to implement some custom resolution logic, because usually extension-less requests are understood as requests for HTML files.

Absolute specifiers can be any kind of URL that resolve to importable source code. Most notably:

• HTTP URLs are always supported on the web since most scripts already have HTTP URLs. It's supported natively by Deno (which initially predicated its entire module system on HTTP URLs), but it only has experimental support in Node via custom HTTPS loaders.

• file: URLs are supported by many non-browser runtimes such as Node, since scripts there already have file: URLs, but they are not supported by browsers due to security reasons.

• Data URLs are supported by many runtimes including browsers, Node, Deno, etc. They are useful for embedding small modules directly into the source code. Supported MIME types are those that designate importable source code, such as text/javascript for JavaScript, application/json for JSON modules, application/wasm for WebAssembly modules, etc. (They may still require import attributes.)

  // HTTP URLs
  import x from "https://example.com/x.js";
  // Data URLs
  import x from "data:text/javascript,export default 42;";
  // Data URLs for JSON modules
  import x from 'data:application/json,{"foo":42}' with { type: "json" };
  

  text/javascript data URLs are still interpreted as modules, but they cannot use relative imports — because the data: URL scheme is not hierarchical. That is, import x from "data:text/javascript,import y from './y.js';" will throw an error because the relative specifier './y.js' cannot be resolved.

• node: URLs resolve to built-in Node.js modules. They are supported by Node and other runtimes that claim compatibility with Node, such as Bun.

Bare specifiers, popularized by CommonJS, are resolved within the node_modules directory. For example, if you have import x from "foo", then the runtime will look for the foo package within any node_modules directory in the parent directories of the current module. This behavior can be reproduced in browsers using import maps, which also enable you to customize resolution in other ways.

The module resolution algorithm can also be executed programmatically using the import.meta.resolve function defined by the HTML spec.

In this example, we create a re-usable module that exports a function to get all primes within a given range.

// getPrimes.js
/**
 * Returns a list of prime numbers that are smaller than `max`.
 */
export function getPrimes(max) {
  const isPrime = Array.from({ length: max }, () => true);
  isPrime[0] = isPrime[1] = false;
  isPrime[2] = true;
  for (let i = 2; i * i < max; i++) {
    if (isPrime[i]) {
      for (let j = i ** 2; j < max; j += i) {
        isPrime[j] = false;
      }
    }
  }
  return [...isPrime.entries()]
    .filter(([, isPrime]) => isPrime)
    .map(([number]) => number);
}

import { getPrimes } from "/modules/getPrimes.js";

console.log(getPrimes(10)); // [2, 3, 5, 7]

The identifier being imported is a live binding, because the module exporting it may re-assign it and the imported value would change. However, the module importing it cannot re-assign it. Still, any module holding an exported object can mutate the object, and the mutated value can be observed by all other modules importing the same value.

You can also observe the new value through the module namespace object.

// my-module.js
export let myValue = 1;
setTimeout(() => {
  myValue = 2;
}, 500);

// main.js
import { myValue } from "/modules/my-module.js";
import * as myModule from "/modules/my-module.js";

console.log(myValue); // 1
console.log(myModule.myValue); // 1
setTimeout(() => {
  console.log(myValue); // 2; my-module has updated its value
  console.log(myModule.myValue); // 2
  myValue = 3; // TypeError: Assignment to constant variable.
  // The importing module can only read the value but can't re-assign it.
}, 1000);

• export
• import()
• import.meta
• Import attributes
• Previewing ES6 Modules and more from ES2015, ES2016 and beyond on blogs.windows.com (2016)
• ES6 in Depth: Modules on hacks.mozilla.org (2015)
• ES modules: A cartoon deep-dive on hacks.mozilla.org (2018)
• Exploring JS, Ch.16: Modules by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer
• Export and Import on javascript.info