Forever errors with babel-node

Question

I have a simple node server:

//server.js

import express  from 'express';
import React    from 'react';
...

When I try to run this using Forever:

forever start -c "babel-node --experimental" server.js , it errors out due to use of import

/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/React/ReactBoilerplates/koba04/app/server.js:1
(function (exports, require, module, __filename, __dirname) { import express  
                                                              ^^^^^^
SyntaxError: Unexpected reserved word
    at Module._compile (module.js:439:25)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:497:10)
    at startup (node.js:119:16)
    at node.js:902:3
error: Forever detected script exited with code: 8

I have also tried pm2 and nodemon, I get same error there as well. For pm2, I followed this issue https://github.com/Unitech/PM2/issues/1167, but it didn't work either. What am I doing wrong here?

Laplante

With PM2 just do: pm2 start app.js --interpreter ./node_modules/.bin/babel-node – Blather

It appears you forgot to define .babelrc file with presets by default – Stalagmite

Answer 1

forever start -c "node -r babel-register" ./src/index.js

Also works.

Walt

Answer 2

This works for on-the-fly transpilation for me: forever start -c node_modules/.bin/babel-node server.js

Another solution is using the Require Hook like this:

// server-wrapper.js
require('babel/register');

require('./server.js');

Then run forever start server-wrapper.js.

Jumper

Answer 3

I suggest to precompile your es6 scripts into es5 scripts and run the app with a forever start server.js command where server.js is a result of precompilation.

If you're using react.js for an isomorphic app you also will be needed to precompile your scripts for browsers either (via browserify, webpack and so on).

So I see no profit to work with es6 scripts via on demand compilation versus precompilation with gulp or any other js building system.

Arciform

Did you mean to say "compilation" instead of "compilcation" throughout? – Catarinacatarrh

The profit is obvious: You don't need to precompile. – Jumper

Answer 4

In your package.json file under scripts tag add entry like below

in package.json under scripts tag

"scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "start": "forever start -c babel-node src/index.js",
},

all the dependencies must include in dependencies tag in package.json file

then do a npm install then run the server by executing npm start

Dregs