babel-plugin-async-import

Platform-agnostic asynchronous imports

Overview

• Generate code that can run on server and in browser
• Full support for code splitting and SSR
• Node 8+
• See the v1 branch for Babel 6 support

import React, { Suspense } from 'react';
 
export default function LazyContainer({ name, ...props }) {
  const LazyComponent = React.lazy(() => import(`./pages/${name}`));
  return (
    <Suspense fallback="Loading...">
      <LazyComponent {...props} />
    </Suspense>
  );
}

Usage

babel.config.js

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    // Default options
    ['async-import', {
      // browser: 'import(REQUEST)',
      // node: 'Promise.resolve(require(REQUEST))'
    }],
 
    // Common template
    ['async-import', {
      template: 'myCustomImport(REQUEST)'
    }],
  ]
};

Use BABEL_TARGET to choose the output template:

BABEL_TARGET=browser babel src --copy-files --out-dir dist
 
BABEL_TARGET=node babel src --copy-files --out-dir dist

Performance

Consider a simple application with the following structure:

App
 ├── Page1
 ├── Page2
 ├── Page3
 └── Page4

Bundling with webpack yields:

# static import 
 main.dfdad3d5930fe00fd037.js       526 kB      0  [emitted]  [big]  main
 
# require.ensure 
chunk.0.6440f6c153085827a48b.js    24.3 kB      0  [emitted]
   main.943ecc70fec31c6444f4.js     503 kB      1  [emitted]  [big]  main
 
# async import 
chunk.0.9491e6c24e3b87d1d63f.js    12.9 kB      0  [emitted]
chunk.1.f37226ca0aefdcb8b991.js     3.7 kB      1  [emitted]
chunk.2.84348279875f5fba6e99.js    3.74 kB      2  [emitted]
chunk.3.c7cdc567dea9bd59569a.js    3.71 kB      3  [emitted]
   main.058200e44cf45d9723b4.js     503 kB      4  [emitted]  [big]  main