Integrating the Javascript SDK with Common JS module

Community Support
1

Our application uses CommonJS module and is built on top of node 14. The npm package is built using ESM. Is there a recommended way to include it as a CommonJS module?

Getting a lot of errors while trying to transpile using babel. Has anyone here done this before?

2

not done before, but am interested in making it work. what do you mean by EJS please? i only know EJS as javascript templates, but that doesnt make sense for npm packages

3

Sorry that was a typo. I meant ESM.

The import syntax cannot be mixed with require and I need the temporalio SDK to be transpiled to CommonJS.

4

Hi pratik, you should find that the Temporal npm packages define exports in a CJS-compatible way, by adding properties to exports:

less node_modules/@temporalio/client/lib/workflow-client.js
...
exports.WorkflowClient = WorkflowClient;

Also, in our hello-world sample, you can see this working: during the build step, our TS import statements are compiled to require() statements, for instance in lib/client.js:

const client_1 = require("@temporalio/client");

If you can share the repo or the errors, I might be able to help further :relaxed:

5

Thanks @loren

I was able to make it work using the CommonJS syntax i.e require.

I was working on a project that was developed on node@10.x where it would not work out of the box. Moved to another project that was using node@14.x.

6

You’re welcome! Yeah, the SDK only supports Node v14+. Here are a couple samples that might be relevant:

Un-transpiled JS with imports: samples-typescript/hello-world-js at main · temporalio/samples-typescript · GitHub

TS & ESM: samples-typescript/fetch-esm at main · temporalio/samples-typescript · GitHub

7

Thanks, @loren - Would you also have TS/JS examples for SAGA implementations with Temporal?

I can see that the Java Client supports SAGA out of the box: samples-java/TripBookingWorkflowImpl.java at main · temporalio/samples-java · GitHub

8

No sample yet. You could certainly code a SAGA with the current SDK, but I also opened an FR to provide helpers for it. Feel free to chime in if you have API ideas :relaxed: [Feature Request] Add SAGA helpers? · Issue #456 · temporalio/sdk-typescript · GitHub