Explain scope of imported names?

[cowboy]

Right now, it's not clear whether or not I can import inside a function or how imported names are scoped. Does it follow the same rules as var? Or let? Or is it per-file?

[wycats]

Good point.

The answer is that imports and exports are only top-level. This disallows:

if (Math.random() > 0.5) { import foo from "bar"; }

If you need a dynamic load, you can do:

this.import("../foo").then(function(foo) {
  // do stuff here
});

in ES7, you will be able to use await syntax (inside an async function, but also likely at the top-level of a module):

var foo = await this.import("../foo");

[wycats]

The general goal is for people to use the declarative form as much as possible, which makes building and downloading the dependency graph possible up-front. The dynamic form can be used as an escape valve if necessary, but becomes async for obvious reasons.

One pattern I see a lot that leads to conditional imports in Node is attempting to load one module, and then falling back to another. I would anticipate doing that via Loader configuration (the app author could alias graceful-fs to fs for example). At that point, modules would just load in fs and let the app author decide what that means.

This kind of thing is how polyfills work in the browser today (replacing outdated or missing "modules" with beefed up versions).

[UltCombo]

@wycats does this.import() still exist? Or should we just use System.import() now?