write a package with the option to import subpaths typescript

Question

I wrote a package let's call it commons and another project that imports it.
I do not want to import the whole package but only one subpath of this package.
import { client } from '@commons/clients' instead of import { client } from '@commons'

I have seen typescript packages such as jose that enable such behavior.
E.g. import createRemoteJWKSet from 'jose/jwks/remote'.

After some research, I did see that I can define in package.json this behavior with exports key. Unfortunately, this seems to work only for pure js and not typescript as far as I tested it. Also, I have found that typescript doesn't support exports yet in some thread. How does a package such as jose manage this?

Jaquiss

Author of jose here. I have given up on that vision. The typescript and bundler ecosystem is not there yet to be able to consume it without friction. I have moved away from this submodule scheme and instead opted in for a flat index export. The friction is gone and so long as the consumers use ESM they get easy tree shaking to remove what they don't actually use. – Grefe

First of all thanks for the quick answer. Could you maybe point to the relevant files in jose that makes this possible, or some example on how to do it? I do not know what is this "flat index export" (also some link to an explanation about what is it will be appreciated) and googling this term doesn't give relevant pages. – Jaquiss

You've already linked to the repository, it's all there in the package.json, you can inspect the state of the repo in v3.x vs v4.x using the github tag selection UI to observe the difference. – Grefe

Answer 1

This is supported in TypeScript but not by the default module resolution. To allow TypeScript to resolve the module, you need to use either Node16 or NodeNext for your moduleResolution field in tsconfig.json.

Plectron