Synopsis

sixportify is a browserify transform that enables you to write CommonJS module exports as if you were using ES6 (also known as harmony).

Install

Node.js

With NPM

npm install sixportify

From source

git clone https://github.com/pluma/sixportify.git
cd sixportify
npm install
make test

Basic usage example

somelib.js

export var config = {x: 4};
export function addX(y) {
    return config.x + y;
}

index.js

var somelib = require('./somelib.js');
console.log(somelib.addX(1)); // 5
somelib.config.x = 2;
console.log(somelib.addX(1)); // 3

Usage

var browserify = require('browserify'),
    sixportify = require('sixportify'),
    b = browserify();

b.transform(sixportify);
b.add('./index.js');
b.bundle().pipe(require('fs').createWriteStream('bundle.js'));

Caveats

The implementation is incredibly naïve.

While sixportify works just fine with variable declarations, keep in mind that re-assignment may have unintended consequences. E.g.

export var foo = 'bar';
foo = 'qux';

In this case the value that will actually be exported as exports.foo will be "qux", not "bar".

You should therefore treat exported var declarations as constants.

Likewise, the following will not work as intended:

// in somelib.js
export var foo = 'bar';
export function greet() {
    console.log('Hello, ' + foo + '!'); // still refers to the local var
}

// in index.js
var somelib = require('./somelib.js');
somelib.foo = 'world'; // re-assigns the exported var
somelib.greet(); // "Hello bar!"

ES6/harmony and Classes

If you want to use sixportify with ES6-style classes, you can do that:

// in somelib.es6
export class Foo {
    greet() {
        console.log('sup');
    }
}

// in index.es6
var Foo = require('./somelib.es6').Foo;
var foo = new Foo();
foo.greet(); // "sup"

This means you can use sixportify to preprocess your ES6-style exports for es6ify.

Keep in mind that sixportify does not understand decomposition, so the following will not work:

// BROKEN!
var obj = {'foo': 'bar'};
export var {foo} = obj;
// ALSO BROKEN!
var arr = ['hello'];
export var [qux] = arr;

License

The MIT/Expat license.