Add ESM Import Compatibility

[evanplaice]

ESM is coming. It is already supported in most browsers and is coming to Node ¹.

With that said, there are few libraries that have native support for it yet. As far as Markdown parsers go:

• markdown-it is very heavily invested in CommonJS, ESM support will likely never happen there
• marked - had a contributor implement ESM support and the maintainers rejected the PR
• remark - also heavily invested in CommonJS
• markdown-js - looks like it's no longer being maintained

Long-story-short, unless somebody starts a 'clean room' implementation of a Markdown parser in ES this is going to be a pain point for FE devs working in native ESM.

I've been experimenting a bit and managed to create a PR that adds support with very minimal impact on the existing codebase.

¹ I'm a participant on the Node/Modules work group. If all goes well, we may see unflagged support before the end of the year.

[tivie]

Thanks for your contribution. I will have a look as soon as possible, when I have the time.

[Justsnoopy30]

It still seems there is not ESM compatibility for Showdown in 2020.

[Gillardo]

Is this coming?

[tirithen]

Any updates on ESM compatability?

[Marshal27]

+1

the dist in closed PR 661 so far works well.

[LeaVerou]

Another vote for ESM here. I love Showdown, but had to switch away from it for my modules because I can't distribute libraries that leak into the global scope. 😞

[wojteko22]

I'm also waiting for this and starting to think about switching library.

[Gillardo]

yeah i think i may have to switch if this doesnt happen soon, which is a shame as i like this library, no idea what to change to either

[jessejohnson]

Does anyone have an alternative that has ESM Import compat? It's 2023 and I can't seem to find any. :(

@LeaVerou what did you switch to?

[taorepoara]

Here is the way to import this lib in an ESM:

import Showdown from 'showdown';

[TheDogHusky]

Hello!
If I downloaded showdown.min.js, on an Expressjs server, how can I do the import?
Currently I have a script /static/script/ticketManager.js that needs showdown.
Showdown is located in the same directory as ticketManager.
When I try to import import showdown from "/static/script/showdown.min.js", it says that it doesn't have default export. (the same happens if I do import showdown from "./showdown.min.js".

[TheDogHusky]

Is there no esm support for browser?

[suhli]

not working with import() function

demo

TypeError: Cannot set properties of undefined (setting 'showdown')
    at https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/showdown@latest/dist/showdown.min.js:2:72031
    at https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/showdown@latest/dist/showdown.min.js:2:72035

---

just using jsDeliver /+esm path or esm.run

(async () => {
  try {
    const Showdown = await import("https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/showdown/+esm");
    const converter = new Showdown.default.Converter();
    document.querySelector("#d").innerHTML = converter.makeHtml(
      `# showdown.js`
    );
  } catch (e) {
    console.error(e.stack);
  }
})();