Nanoid4 in codecept error [ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: require() of ES Module

Question

I updated to nanoid4 and began getting the following error:

[ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: require() of ES Module [...]/node_modules/nanoid/index.js not supported. Instead change the require of index.js in [...]/signup_test.ts to a dynamic import() which is available in all CommonJS modules

This is the import it's complaining about:

import { customAlphabet } from 'nanoid'

This is the tsconfig file I'm using:

{
    "ts-node": {
      "files": true
    },
    "compilerOptions": {
      "jsx": "react-jsx",
      "types": [
        "node",
        "codeceptjs"
      ],
      "experimentalDecorators": true,
      "lib": [
        "dom",
        "dom.iterable",
        "esnext"
      ],
      "allowJs": true,
      "skipLibCheck": true,
      "strict": false,
      "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
      "noEmit": true,
      "esModuleInterop": true,
      "module": "ES6",
      "moduleResolution": "node",
      "resolveJsonModule": true,
      "incremental": true,
      "target": "ESNext",
    },
    "include": [
      "next-env.d.ts",
      "**/*.ts",
      "**/*.tsx"
    ],
    "exclude": [
      "node_modules"
    ]
  }

Unsure why it's broken

Answer 1

The error "[ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: require() not supported" occurs because a package you are importing has been converted to be an ESM only package, which means that the package cannot be imported with require() anymore. Use npm i [email protected]

Answer 2

It works if you use another version of nanoid. For example:

npm uninstall nanoid
npm install [email protected]

If it doesn't, try changing some of your tsconfig.json according to this.

Answer 3

This may be trivial, but in my case the root cause of the problem was the wrong node version being used. Normally I'm using v20.10, but the nanoid package was installed with v18.17.1 (npm: 9.6.7).

So switching back to v.20.10 solved my problem.

Answer 4

I changed my import to this: import * as nanoid from 'nanoid'; and it worked, so you can try re-writing your import statement

The nanoid docs do not specify this but I just thought about it and tried and it worked

I hope this helps others