ES6 modules implementation, how to load a json file

I'm implementing an example from https://github.com/moroshko/react-autosuggest

Important code is like this:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import suburbs from 'json!../suburbs.json';

function getSuggestions(input, callback) {
  const suggestions = suburbs
    .filter(suburbObj => suburbMatchRegex.test(suburbObj.suburb))
    .sort((suburbObj1, suburbObj2) =>
      suburbObj1.suburb.toLowerCase().indexOf(lowercasedInput) -
      suburbObj2.suburb.toLowerCase().indexOf(lowercasedInput)
    )
    .slice(0, 7)
    .map(suburbObj => suburbObj.suburb);

  // 'suggestions' will be an array of strings, e.g.:
  //   ['Mentone', 'Mill Park', 'Mordialloc']

  setTimeout(() => callback(null, suggestions), 300);
}

This copy-paste code from the example (that works), has an error in my project:

Error: Cannot resolve module 'json' in /home/juanda/redux-pruebas/components

If I take out the prefix json!:

import suburbs from '../suburbs.json';

This way I got not errors at compile time (import is done). However I got errors when I execute it:

Uncaught TypeError: _jsonfilesSuburbsJson2.default.filter is not a function

If I debug it I can see suburbs is an objectc, not an array so filter function is not defined.

However in the example is commented suggestions is an array. If I rewrite suggestions like this, everything works:

  const suggestions = suburbs
  var suggestions = [ {
    'suburb': 'Abbeyard',
    'postcode': '3737'
  }, {
    'suburb': 'Abbotsford',
    'postcode': '3067'
  }, {
    'suburb': 'Aberfeldie',
    'postcode': '3040'
  } ].filter(suburbObj => suburbMatchRegex.test(suburbObj.suburb))

So... what json! prefix is doing in the import?

Why can't I put it in my code? Some babel configuration?

First of all you need to install json-loader:

npm i json-loader --save-dev

Then, there are two ways how you can use it:

1. In order to avoid adding json-loader in each import you can add to webpack.config this line:

    loaders: [
      { test: /\.json$/, loader: 'json-loader' },
      // other loaders 
    ]
   

   Then import json files like this

    import suburbs from '../suburbs.json';
   

2. Use json-loader directly in your import, as in your example:

    import suburbs from 'json!../suburbs.json';
   

Note: In webpack 2.* instead of keyword loaders need to use rules.,

also webpack 2.* uses json-loader by default

> *.json files are now supported without the json-loader. You may still use it. It's not a breaking change. > > v2.1.0-beta.28

json-loader doesn't load json file if it's array, in this case you need to make sure it has a key, for example

{
    "items": [
    {
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/vmg/redcarpet/issues/598",
      "repository_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/vmg/redcarpet",
      "labels_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/vmg/redcarpet/issues/598/labels{/name}",
      "comments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/vmg/redcarpet/issues/598/comments",
      "events_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/vmg/redcarpet/issues/598/events",
      "html_url": "https://github.com/vmg/redcarpet/issues/598",
      "id": 199425790,
      "number": 598,
      "title": "Just a heads up (LINE SEPARATOR character issue)",
    },
    ..... other items in array .....
]}

This just works on React & React Native

const data = require('./data/photos.json');

console.log('[-- typeof data --]', typeof data); // object


const fotos = data.xs.map(item => {
	return { uri: item };
});

With json-loader installed, now you can simply use:

import suburbs from '../suburbs.json';

or, even more simply:

import suburbs from '../suburbs';

Found this thread when I couldn't load a json-file with ES6 TypeScript 2.6. I kept getting this error:

> TS2307 (TS) Cannot find module 'json-loader!./suburbs.json'

To get it working I had to declare the module first. I hope this will save a few hours for someone.

declare module "json-loader!*" {
  let json: any;
  export default json;
}

...

import suburbs from 'json-loader!./suburbs.json';

If I tried to omit loader from json-loader I got the following error from webpack:

> BREAKING CHANGE: It's no longer allowed to omit the '-loader' suffix > when using loaders. > You need to specify 'json-loader' instead of 'json', > see https://webpack.js.org/guides/migrating/#automatic-loader-module-name-extension-removed

Node v8.5.0+

You don't need JSON loader. Node provides ECMAScript Modules (ES6 Module support) with the --experimental-modules flag, you can use it like this

node --experimental-modules myfile.mjs

Then it's very simple

import myJSON from './myJsonFile.json';
console.log(myJSON);

Then you'll have it bound to the variable myJSON.