ecmascript 6 - Import JavaScript file and call functions using webpack, ES6, ReactJS

Question

Trying to do something I would think would be very simple. I would like to import an existing JavaScript library and then call it's functions. So for example I would like to import blah.js and then call blah().

import React from 'react';
import {blah} from 'blah/js/blah.js';

class MyClass extends React.Component {
    constructor() {
        super();
    }

    componentDidMount() {
        window.addEventListener('resize', this.handleResize);
    }

    componentWillUnmount() {
        window.removeEventListener('resize', this.handleResize);
    }

    handleResize() {
        blah.blah();
    }

    render() {
          ....
    }
}

export default MyClass;

Just wondering what magical combination of things I have to do to make this work. Maybe I'm just missing the point. The example gives the error "TypeError: _blah.blah is undefined".

Answer 1

Named exports:

Let's say you create a file called utils.js, with utility functions that you want to make available for other modules (e.g. a React component). Then you would make each function a named export:

export function add(x, y) {
  return x + y
}

export function mutiply(x, y) {
  return x * y
}

Assuming that utils.js is located in the same directory as your React component, you can use its exports like this:

import { add, multiply } from './utils.js';
...
add(2, 3) // Can be called wherever in your component, and would return 5.

Or if you prefer, place the entire module's contents under a common namespace:

import * as utils from './utils.js'; 
...
utils.multiply(2,3)

Default exports:

If you on the other hand have a module that only does one thing (could be a React class, a normal function, a constant, or anything else) and want to make that thing available to others, you can use a default export. Let's say we have a file log.js, with only one function that logs out whatever argument it's called with:

export default function log(message) {
  console.log(message);
}

This can now be used like this:

import log from './log.js';
...
log('test') // Would print 'test' in the console.

You don't have to call it log when you import it, you could actually call it whatever you want:

import logToConsole from './log.js';
...
logToConsole('test') // Would also print 'test' in the console.

Combined:

A module can have both a default export (max 1), and named exports (imported either one by one, or using * with an alias). React actually has this, consider:

import React, { Component, PropTypes } from 'react';