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can't import jsonwebtoken in modern typescript esm app

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#785 18 comments 37 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
node.js, typescript
Domain
authentication, backend, security

Research direction

No files or tests are named. Start with the import examples and the related issue #655, then inspect the package's current module exports and declaration setup. Done means a modern TypeScript ESM app can import sign, verify, and their option types without a shim, with runtime behavior and typings agreeing.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

we can't properly import this library in a modern typescript project. here's the problem:

  • import * as jwt from "jsonwebtoken"
    • export default contains what i need, sign, verify, etc
    • however, the types won't let me have it
  • @types/jsonwebtoken
    • does not have any definition for a default export

as you can see there's an incompatibility between what can actually be imported at runtime, versus what the @types typings allow us to import. on one hand, this could be seen as a deficiency in the community @types typings

on the other hand, a fundamental fix for this problem would be:

  • upgrade jsonwebtoken for first-class esm support
  • maintain official typings

related issue #655

in the meantime, here's the hack i used to circumvent this problem

  1. create a shim module badmodules/jsonwebtoken.ts

    import * as _jsonwebtoken from "jsonwebtoken"
const jsonwebtoken = <any>_jsonwebtoken

import {
  sign as signType,
  verify as verifyType,
  SignOptions,
  VerifyOptions,
  Algorithm,
} from "jsonwebtoken"

const sign: typeof signType = jsonwebtoken.default.sign
const verify: typeof verifyType = jsonwebtoken.default.verify

export {
  sign,
  verify,
  Algorithm,
  SignOptions,
  VerifyOptions,
}

  2. import the shim module instead

    import {sign, verify, SignOptions, VerifyOptions, Algorithm}
  from "./badmodules/jsonwebtoken.js"
Dominant language
JavaScript
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Forks
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