What is the difference between browserify/requirejs modules and ES6 modules

javascript module requirejs browserify ecmascript-6
joerideg picture joerideg · Feb 23, 2015 · Viewed 24.3k times · Source

I'm still new to ES6 and module loaders and I'm currently looking at combining a browserify setup with ES6. I was wondering if I would still need browserify/requirejs if I'm using ES6 modules. Seems like both allow you to define modules and export them? What is the difference between browserify/requirejs modules and ES6 modules?

Answer

joerideg picture joerideg · Mar 21, 2015

After playing around for a while I did get a better understanding of things, also thanks to @Andy for the blog by Addy Osmani.

There are different module systems: AMD (RequireJS), CommonJS (Node) and the new ES6 module syntax (and the old ES5 Global system of course).

However if you want to use those in your browser you still need to load and wire those modules with some module loader library because browsers still do not support that. For that you could use a module loader like RequireJS, Browserify, SystemJS or es6-module-loader.

SystemJS is my personal favorite because it allows you to load any module system (AMD, CommonJS, ES6) and even use them interchangably in 1 app.

Update: In the mean time Webpack has become available and should be considered as a module loader as well.

Related questions

Node JS fs module inside browser

I have a scenario where I want to export data to CSV from the client-side. I will have a textbox/area or whatever where the user can input data and then ideally with one click, a local CSV file will …

Read More
Relation between CommonJS, AMD and RequireJS?

I'm still very confused about CommonJS, AMD and RequireJS, even after reading a lot. I know that CommonJS (formerly ServerJS) is a group for defining some JavaScript specifications (i.e. modules) when the language is used outside the browser. CommonJS …

Read More
Dynamic require in RequireJS, getting "Module name has not been loaded yet for context" error?

Is there a way to define a module that "dynamically" load other modules in RequireJS? If yes, how the optimizer (r.js) understands how/when a module has to be included? For example, let dynModules a module which defines name/…

Read More