Importmaps support

[goose3228]

Importmaps are available in major browsers for two years already, and there is polyfill for older ones, which makes importmaps suitable for production.

There are 3 major types of importmap entries - URL, node module, and asset. While it's certainly possible to use importmaps in hugo, the way they are constructed from templates looks ugly.

Here is an example:

{{ $apline := (resources.Get "node_modules/dist/module.esm.min.js" | resources.Fingerprint).RelPermalink }}
{{ $app := (resources.Get "js/app.js" | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint).RelPermalink }}
<script type="importmap">
  imports: {
    {
      "vue": "https://unpkg.com/vue@3.5.13/dist/vue.esm-browser.prod.js",
      "my-app": "{{ $app }}",
      {{- range readDir "assets/js/components" -}}
        {{ $res := resources.Get (print "js/components/" .Name) }}
        "components/{{ substr .Name 0 -3 }}": "{{ ($res | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint).RelPermalink }}",
      {{- end -}}
      "alpinejs":  "{{ $alpine }}"
    }
  }
</script>

<link rel="modulepreload" href="{{ $alpine }}"></link>
<link rel="modulepreload" href="{{ $app }}"></link>

Note that currently it seems impossible to import node module properly without using js.Build, so they are in assets. There probably is a better way to generate an importmap, but anyway it would be nice to generate the code above with a config:

[importmap.vue]
  url = "https://unpkg.com/vue@3.5.13/dist/vue.esm-browser.prod.js"
[importmap.app]
  asset = "js/app.js"
  preload = true
[importmap.components]
  dir = "js/components"
  prefix = "components/"
[importmap.aplinejs]
  node = "alpinejs"
  preload = true

And then simply {{ .Site.Importmap }} in a template.

[bep]

I don't know the details of importmaps, but I'm pretty sure that it would need to be seen in the context of js.Build/Bath (https://gohugo.io/functions/js/). Looking at your example code, I see that you don't use that feature. I would recommend you take it for a spin.

And I suspect there's some missing pieces for this upstream, ref evanw/esbuild#2230 ... But again, I have only scratched the surface on this.

[goose3228]

I've used Webpack a lot, ESBuild seems to be about the same thing. This proposal actually comes after successfully migrating to importmaps from Webpack.

The point is not to bundle and build javascripts at all. It provides more flexibility for dynamic imports, and not much overhead with HTTP2. In webpack and ESBuild you have to manually declare each entrypoint, or "chunk". With importmap i can tell "Vanilla" javascript where it can get a certain module, and browser will fetch it whenever it's needed.

For example, with

"intl-tel-input": https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/intl-tel-input@25.3.0/build/js/intlTelInput.min.js`

in importmap i can do

import("intl-tel-input").then(intlTelInput => {
  // Do stuff
}

The same can be achieved with ESBuild or Webpack, but it requires more effort and more CI time.

As some people in ESBuild pointed out, importmaps are not a good feature for ESBuild, it's a way to replace ESBuild for some projects with 100 lines of code.