How to resolve "Cannot use import statement outside a module" from Jest when running tests?

Question

I have a React application (not using Create React App) built using TypeScript, Jest, Webpack, and Babel. When trying to run yarn jest, I get the following error:

I have tried removing all packages and re-adding them. It does not resolve this. I have looked at similar questions and documentation and I am still not understanding something. I went so far as to follow another guide for setting up this environment from scratch and still received this issue with my code.

Dependencies include...

"dependencies": {
  "@babel/plugin-transform-runtime": "^7.6.2",
  "@babel/polyfill": "^7.6.0",
  "babel-jest": "^24.9.0",
  "react": "^16.8.6",
  "react-dom": "^16.8.6",
  "react-test-renderer": "^16.11.0",
  "source-map-loader": "^0.2.4"
},
"devDependencies": {
  "@babel/core": "^7.6.0",
  "@babel/preset-env": "^7.6.0",
  "@babel/preset-react": "^7.0.0",
  "@types/enzyme": "^3.9.2",
  "@types/enzyme-adapter-react-16": "^1.0.5",
  "@types/jest": "^24.0.13",

The component's import lines...

import * as React from "react";
import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Switch } from "react-router-dom";
import HomePage from "./components/pages";
import {
  Footer,
  Header,
  Navigation,
} from "./components/shared";

The test file....

import * as React from "react";
import * as renderer from "react-test-renderer";
import App from "../App";

it("Renders the Footer correctly", () => {
  const tree = renderer
    .create(<App />)
    .toJSON();
  expect(tree).toMatchSnapshot();
});

I expected to be able to use named imports in my components without my tests blowing up. It appears to fix the issue if I only use default imports throughout my solution, but I would prefer to not go that route.

Answer 1

I was having the same failure (also using Babel, Typescript and Jest), it was driving me crazy for hours!

Ended up creating a new babel.config.js file specifically for the tests. I had a large .babelrc that wasn't getting picked up by jest no matter what I did to it. The main app still uses the .babelrc as this overrides babel.config.js files.

Steps I took:

Install jest, ts-jest, babel-jest, and @babel/preset-env:

npm i jest ts-jest babel-jest @babel/preset-env

Add babel.config.js (only used by jest)

module.exports = {presets: ['@babel/preset-env']}

In jest.config.js update to:

module.exports = {
  preset: 'ts-jest',
  transform: {
    '^.+\\.(ts|tsx)?$': 'ts-jest',
    '^.+\\.(js|jsx)$': 'babel-jest',
  }
};

package.json

  "scripts": {
    "test": "jest"

Answer 2

Use Babel to transpile those JS Modules and you'll be able to write your tests with es6.

Install Babel/preset-env

npm i -D @babel/preset-env

Create a babel configuration file with the preset

//babel.config.js
module.exports = {presets: ['@babel/preset-env']}

Answer 3

I solved this by migrating the .babelrc file to babel.config.js! Shocker.

Answer 4

I fixed it by simply appending the pattern after the run statement in package.json runner

{
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "test": "react-scripts test --transformIgnorePatterns 'node_modules/(?!my-library-dir)/'"
    ...

Then, just run npm test

Answer 5

For future references,

I solved the problem by using below jest config, after reading Logan Shoemaker's answer.

module.exports = {
  verbose: true,
  setupFilesAfterEnv: ["<rootDir>src/setupTests.ts"],
  moduleFileExtensions: ["js", "jsx", "ts", "tsx"],
  moduleDirectories: ["node_modules", "src"],
  moduleNameMapper: {
    "\\.(css|less|scss)$": "identity-obj-proxy"
  },
  transform: {
    '^.+\\.(ts|tsx)?$': 'ts-jest',
    "^.+\\.(js|jsx)$": "babel-jest",
    "\\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|eot|otf|webp|svg|ttf|woff|woff2|mp4|webm|wav|mp3|m4a|aac|oga)$": "<rootDir>/__mocks__/file.js",
  }
};

Answer 6

try this thing if you are using babel 6

1. Adding @babel/plugin-transform-modules-commonjs in the plugin section of babel.config.js

or

2. For my case import issue was due to the react file drop by adding that to transformIgnorePatterns

"transformIgnorePatterns": ["/node_modules/(?!react-file-drop)"]

Answer 7

Solution: my named imports were coming from index.js files and I believe ts-jest needed them as index.ts files (I'm using Typescript). If anyone else runs into this error, couldn't hurt to check if you derped your file extensions.

I wasted a lot of time on this, unfortunately, but I learned a lot about webpack configurations and Babel.

Answer 8

Add your test script in package.json with Node experimental feature: --experimental-vm-modules

In this way you won't require babel or other dependencies.

Examples:

"test": "NODE_OPTIONS='--experimental-vm-modules --experimental-specifier-resolution=node' jest"

If you get this error: zsh: command not found: jest, try with node passing jest.js like this:

"test": "NODE_OPTIONS='--experimental-vm-modules --experimental-specifier-resolution=node --trace-warnings' node node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js --detectOpenHandles"

Answer 9

I'm surprised that none of the answers does not give an elegant solution:

jest.config.js

module.exports = {
  ...,
  globals: {
    "ts-jest": {
      isolatedModules: true,
    },
  },
};

This compiles each file separately therefore avoiding the no exports issue.

Answer 10

Create .babelrc on the main directory and add this code and install these packages @babel/core, @babel/preset-env and @babel/preset-react

{
  "presets": [
    [
      "@babel/preset-env",
      {
        "modules": "commonjs"
      }
    ],
    "@babel/preset-react"
  ]
}

Answer 11

I discovered that this error might be triggered when you try to load a dependency that is made for the browser and, thus, cannot work with jest (node).

I had a lot of trouble solving this issue for @zip.js/zip.js lib. But I could do it like that:

Here is my jest.config.js. Adapt it to your need. The trick here is the moduleNameMapper that will make all imports to zip.js point to the file __mocks__/@zip.js/zip.js I created in my root folder.

export default {
  preset: 'ts-jest',
  testEnvironment: 'node',
  moduleNameMapper: {
    '@zip.js/zip.js': '<rootDir>/__mocks__/@zip.js/zip.js',
  },
}

And here is what I have in <rootDir>/__mocks__/@zip.js/zip.js file:

module.exports = {}

Answer 12

Matching file extensions:

I importing a file named Todo.jsx in the root as ./src/Todo/. Whenever I changed it to Todo.js the problem went away.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the requirement is for having your file extension as jsx vs js for your components. It did not effect me at all, but I could imagine it could mess with intellisense or snippets.

Answer 13

For me renaming file to babel.config.js worked. Here is my config file an NX project using next with Typescript along with Twin-macro

// .babelrc.js >> babel.config.js
module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      "@nrwl/react/babel",
      {
        "runtime": "automatic",
        "targets": {
          "browsers": [">0.25%", "not dead"]
        },
        "preset-react": {
          runtime: "automatic",
          importSource: "@emotion/react",
        },
      }
    ],
    '@babel/preset-env',
    '@emotion/babel-preset-css-prop',
    '@babel/preset-typescript'
  ],
  plugins: ['@emotion', 'macros', '@babel/plugin-transform-runtime', 'react-docgen'],
}

Also, please note even updating package.json works, https://kulshekhar.github.io/ts-jest/docs/getting-started/presets/#basic-usage

// package.json
"jest": {
    // Replace `ts-jest` with the preset you want to use
    // from the above list
    "preset": "ts-jest"
  }

Answer 14

I needed to do a couple things to get this to work for me

1. Rename my .babelrc to babel.config.js and make a little change:

// .babelrc
{
  "presets": [
    [
      "@babel/preset-env",
      {
        "corejs": "3.26",
        "useBuiltIns": "usage"
      }
    ],
    "@babel/preset-react"
  ],
  ...
}

// babel.config.js - This still works fine with webpack
module.exports = {
  "presets": [
    [
      "@babel/preset-env",
      {
        "corejs": "3.26",
        "useBuiltIns": "usage"
      }
    ],
    "@babel/preset-react"
  ],
  ...
}

2. Add the following to my jest config file:

{
  ...  
  "transformIgnorePatterns": [
    "node_modules/(?!(react-leaflet-custom-control)/)"
  ],
  ...
}

Where react-leaflet-custom-control was the package causing issues for me.

Answer 15

I encountered the same problem with Typescript, Jest, and VueJS/VueCli 3. The normal build has no problem. only happens for Jest. I struggled for hours by searching. But no answer actually works. In my case, I have a dependency on my own typescript package which I specific "target": "es6" in the tsconfig.json. That's the root cause. So the solution is simply to change the dependent's (Not the same project) back to es5 tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es5",
    ...
  },
  ...
}

Answer 16

Personnaly I followed @ajwl setup but discovered that jsdom-worker inside setupFiles: section of jest.config.js was triggering that same error. Once removed, my tests were passing.

P.S. my babel.config.js is a bit different, since I have a Vuejs (v2) SPA (bundled with Vitejs):

module.exports = {
  plugins: ['@babel/plugin-transform-modules-commonjs'],
  presets: [['@babel/preset-env', { targets: { node: 'current' } }]]
}

Answer 17

The problem is likely that jest doesn't support esmodules natively. Which can cause problems if youre typescript target is es6 or greater.

If you are testing the built typescript output, you could simply add a module=commonjs flag while transpiling. That way, your code can run with es6 or greater and still work with Jest.

"scripts": {
  "test": tsc --module commonjs && jest {your-output-folder}/
}

What's great about this is that I didn't have to add any additional babel dependencies or special jest runners :)

Answer 18

I solved it by changing my tsconfig.json to a compatible native output

"module": "commonjs", /* Specify module code generation: 'none', 'commonjs', 'amd', 'system', 'umd', 'es2015', 'es2020', or 'ESNext'. */

It is not ideal in every scenario but you might be okay with this.

Answer 19

All I had to do, was simply updating the package @babel/preset-env in the dev dependencies to the latest version

// package.json
"@babel/preset-env": "^7.18.6"

Answer 20

None of the answers helped me, what did help me was making sure my NODE_ENV was set to test, since babel config is per NODE_ENV using the wrong NODE_ENV by accident that is not configured in babel config will mean you wont be using babel and the typescript files will not be transformed.

It took me couple of hours to figure this one out so i hope it will save someone else the time it took me.

Answer 21

Don't know why and how but how I solved the problem was really interesting. Just add __mocks__ folder in your src folder and create an empty file inside __mocks__ named axios.js

Answer 22

Update to the latest version. Imports work with jest 29.5.0 and ts-jest 29.1.0

yarn upgrade jest ts-jest

jest.config.json

  "roots": ["<rootDir>/"],
  "collectCoverageFrom": ["src/*.ts", "src/**/*.ts"],
  "transform": {
    "^.+\\.ts?$": "ts-jest"
  },
  "testMatch": ["<rootDir>/**/?(*.)(spec|test).(ts|js)?(x)"]
}

Answer 23

Too late for this answer :) After trying all the possible solutions, this worked for me: The solution, that works for me:

1. create a file named jest/mocks/@react-native-firebase/crashlytics.js

export default () => ({ log: jest.fn(), recordError: jest.fn(), });

2. create a file named jest/jestSetupFile.js

import mockFirebaseCrashlytics from './mocks/@react-native-firebase/crashlytics';

jest.mock('@react-native-firebase/crashlytics', () => mockFirebaseCrashlytics);

3. in package.json add

"jest": { "setupFiles": ["./jest/jestSetupFile.js"] },

Answer 24

Using pnpm I had to change the transformIgnorePatterns to the correct path node_modules/.pnpm:

transformIgnorePatterns: ['/node_modules/.pnpm/(?!package-name)']

Answer 25

If you're using TypeScript, and you have a tsconfig.json file, try removing "module": "esnext" if you're using it

Answer 26

Running npm ci fixed this problem for me.