Parcel-plugin-at-alias NPM

parcel-plugin-at-alias

Parcel plugin to provide support for '@'-prefixed aliases. :package:

Usage

Just install the plugin, e.g.,

npm i parcel-plugin-at-alias

and use alias sections as specified in the Parcel documentation.

The difference with this plugin is that aliases prefixed with @ just work.

Example:

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "parcel-bundler": "1.x",
    "parcel-plugin-at-alias": "latest",
  },
  "alias": {
    "@types": "./src/types"
  }
}

Now in some module you can write:

import { Foo } from '@types/foo';

// do something with Foo, which comes from './src/types/foo'

By default, you can either append paths to your aliases, or use it directly, such as import '@types'.

Question: Why is this useful?

Usually, if you start a greenfield project using Parcel you'd know what it can and what it cannot do. So for a greenfield approach there is potentially no need for this plugin, unless there is a specific requirement to implement @-prefixed aliases.

There are, however, projects that would like to migrate to Parcel, however, cannot do that due to this limitation. There would be just too many changes. We've had such projects in the past and given that the @-prefixed aliases are seen quite often in projects (using Webpack) we'd love to have this support in Parcel, too.

Question: Are there side-effects?

There shouldn't be any. Actually, I don't know why @-prefixed aliases have been disallowed. Of course, it could make lazy / auto installation of scoped modules less reliable, but given that you'd still need to have an explicit @-prefixed alias that collides here I don't see that as a problem.

Nevertheless, if you encounter some strange behavior then just create an issue with a MWE to reproduce and fix and the problem.