How to correctly use ES6 "export default" with CommonJS "require"?

Question

I've been working through Webpack tutorial. In one of the sections, it gives the code example that contains one line of essence to this question:

export default class Button { /* class code here */ }

In the next section of said tutorial, titled "Code splitting", the class defined above is loaded on demand, like this:

require.ensure([], () => {
    const Button = require("./Components/Button");
    const button = new Button("google.com");
    // ...
});

Unfortunately, this code throws an exception:

Uncaught TypeError: Button is not a function

Now, I know that the right way to include ES6 module would be to simply import Button from './Components/Button'; at the top of the file, but using a construct like that anywhere else in the file makes babel a sad panda:

SyntaxError: index.js: 'import' and 'export' may only appear at the top level

After some fiddling with previous (require.ensure()) example above, I realized that ES6 export default syntax exports an object that has property named default, which contains my code (the Button function).

I did fix the broken code example by appending .default after require call, like this:

const Button = require("./Components/Button").default;

...but I think it looks a bit clumsy and it is error-prone (I'd have to know which module uses ES6 syntax, and which uses good old module.exports).

Which brings me to my question: what is the right way to import ES6 code from code that uses CommonJS syntax?

Answer 1

To use export default with Babel, you can do 1 of the following:

1. require("myStuff").default
2. npm install babel-plugin-add-module-exports --save-dev

Or 3:

//myStuff.js
var thingToExport = {};
Object.defineProperty(exports, "__esModule", {
  value: true
});
exports["default"] = thingToExport;