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How To Create Absolute Imports In Vite React App: A step-by-step Guide

Andrew Ezeani on February 24, 2023

Table of Contents Introduction The Problem Prerequisite Setting up the Vite React project for absolute imports Creating a Vite React...
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irina_kats profile image
Irina Kats •

Thanks for the article. I used it but it took me a while to figure out why TypeScript would not recognize Vite aliases. That is, Vite would compile but TypeScript would give an error, or the other way around: TypeScript gives no error but Vite will not compile. Eventually I found out that in addition to "baseUrl": "./src", in tsconfig I also had to give paths for my aliases.

That is, here is the combination that worked for me:
tsconfig.json:

    "baseUrl": "./src",
    "paths": {
      "@/*": ["*"],
      "@components/*": ["components/*"]
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vite.config.ts:

 resolve: {
    alias: {
      '@': '/src',
      '@components': '/src/components',
    },
  },
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import path:

import Text from '@components/text/text';

Without "paths" in the options above the import had not worked.

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andrewezeani profile image
Andrew Ezeani •

I'm glad you found it helpful. It's nice you were able to fix the typescript aliases recognition issue you encountered. Do you mind if I reference your comment in the original article so it's easy to find for others with a similar problem?

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irina_kats profile image
Irina Kats •

Thanks, Andrew, great that you're maintaining the article, go ahead and use my comment. Perhaps there might be other ways to fix this problem; if so I am interested to find out.

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Khan Julmagambetov •

Hey, thanks for the article, I just wanted to ask, is there a way to convert src alias into empty string, so instead of src/components/Button we would import components/Button? thnx

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andrewezeani profile image
Andrew Ezeani • • Edited

If you want to import directly from the components folder, all you need to do is add a new property named components to the alias object. Take a look at the example code provided below:

import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [react()],
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      src: "/src",
      components: "/src/components"
    },
  },
});
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Alternatively, you can opt for a different approach by creating an array that contains all your file names as shown below.

const fileNames = ['src', 'components'];
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Using the array reduce method, you can conveniently generate an object with the respective file paths, as demonstrated below:

const filePaths = fileNames.reduce((acc, cur) => ({
  ...acc, [cur]: `/${cur === "src" ? cur : "src/" + cur}`
}), "");
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Once you have the filePaths object, you can easily include it using the JavaScript spread operator within the alias argument. Here is a code snippet:

import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [react()],
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      ...filePaths
    },
  },
});
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You can use this technique to effortlessly create a new absolute import path by simply adding the desired file name to the fileNames array.

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gregfenton profile image
gregfenton • • Edited

I believe that the above code in the .reduce() should have cur and not curr, and it should pass an empty string as the initial value for the reduce:

const filePaths = fileNames.reduce(
    (acc, cur) => ({
      ...acc,
      [cur]: `/${cur === 'src' ? cur : 'src/' + cur}`
    }),
    ''
  );
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also, you can programmatically get the list of fileNames with:

import fs from 'fs';


const folders = fs.readdirSync('./src', { withFileTypes: true });
const fileNames = folders.filter((dirent) => dirent.isDirectory())
                         .map((dirent) => dirent.name);

console.log(`filePaths: ${JSON.stringify(filePaths, null, 2)}`);
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andrewezeani profile image
Andrew Ezeani •

Thanks for the correction and feedback. I learnt something new!

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andrewezeani profile image
Andrew Ezeani •

@gregfenton I just added a new section to the article where I aim to spotlight useful comments. Do you mind if I add your comment to it?

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gregfenton profile image
gregfenton •

You are free to use what I provided however you would care to. Thanks for asking.

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Anguram Shanmugam •

Awesome Tip Mate 🍻

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andrewezeani profile image
Andrew Ezeani •

Thank you. I’m glad you found it helpful

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Moamal Alaa •

Good job, That was helpful.

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scrodrig •

It worked like a charm. The only thing that did not work for me was VSCode IntelliSence suggesting the absolute routes :(

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houria47 profile image
Houria F. Yaseen •

Consider adding this line in settings.json

"javascript.preferences.importModuleSpecifier": "non-relative"
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It worked for me after hours of searching. Source: stackoverflow, question - 47330773

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GAURAV YADAV •

How did you configure eslint for this?

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Kunal Jain •

Is there a way to convert all existing relative imports in a huge codebase to the format you've shared in the blog? Maybe through a script or something similar?