Tag Archives: esnext

Did you know you can import JSON and CSS files just like you import JavaScript Modules? Thanks to Import Assertions, it’s as easy as this:

Building upon "Import Assertions" we recently saw JSON Modules land in V8/Chromium 91:

“`
import json from './foo.json' assert { type: 'json' };
“`

In Chromium 93 the same thing for CSS lands (“CSS Modules”):

“`
import styles from "./styles.css" assert { type: "css" };
“` https://t.co/Bpy60PwR3a

— Bramus (@bramus) July 30, 2021

It’s a regular import statement with an extra assert { "type": … } part added to it. That way you can tell the browser to treat and parse the referenced file to be of a certain type. Once imported you can use the contents further down in your JavaScript code, just like you do with regular ES Module imports.

{
  "appName": "My App"
}

import configData from './config-data.json' assert { type: 'json' };

console.log(configData.appName); // "MyApp"

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Import Assertions is currently at Stage-3, and is expected to become part of the upcoming ES2022.

Import Assertions are supported in Chromium 91+. For browsers that don’t support it, you can use the es-module-shims polyfill which provides this functionality (and more nice tings)

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In the most recent episode of CodePen Radio, just a little after the 10-minute mark, you can see host Chris Coyier demonstrate this (along with importing packages directly from Skypack):

The CSS example Chris shows there uses Lit. In a non-framework environment, add the imported styles using Constructed Stylesheets:

import styles from "./styles.css" assert { type: "css" };
document.adoptedStyleSheets = [...document.adoptedStyleSheets, styles];

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If you’re wondering why we can’t simply import those files directly, without the assertions, Axel Rauschmayer has the answer:

Browsers never look at filename extensions, they look at content types. And servers are responsible for providing content types for files.

[…]

With an external server, things are even more risky: If it sends the file with the content type text/javascript, it could execute code inside our app.

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And oh, Import Assertions can be used with dynamic import(). Pass in the assertion as the second parameter:

const configData = await import('./config-data.json', {
  assert: { type: 'json' },
});
console.log(configData.appName); // "MyApp"

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A future without a Build System is lurking around the corner, especially when you combine these Import Assertions with a follow-up Evaluator Attributes proposal and Import Maps 🤩

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• TC39 Proposal: Import Assertions →
• TC39 Proposal: JSON Modules →
• CSS Modules Explainer →

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