Improve error message for replacing require usage with dynamic import

[fabiancook]

Version

17.0.1

Platform

Darwin Fabians-Mac-mini-2.local 19.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.6.0: Tue Jan 12 22:13:05 PST 2021; root:xnu-6153.141.16~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

package.json:

{
  "type": "module",
  "dependencies": {
    "node-fetch": "3.0.0"
  }
}

index.js:

const fetch = require("node-fetch");
(async function main() {
  const response = await fetch("https://httpbin.org/get");
  const json = await response.json();
  console.log(json);
})();

$ node index.js
const fetch = require("node-fetch");
              ^

ReferenceError: require is not defined in ES module scope, you can use import instead
This file is being treated as an ES module because it has a '.js' file extension and '/Users/fabian/src/reproduce/package.json' contains "type": "module". To treat it as a CommonJS script, rename it to use the '.cjs' file extension.

Direct replacing of require with import (this is an incorrect assumption after looking at the error):

const fetch = import("node-fetch");
(async function main() {
  const response = await fetch("https://httpbin.org/get");
  const json = await response.json();
  console.log(json);
})();

$ node index.js                                                                                                                                                                                                       
file:///Users/fabian/src/reproduce/index.js:3
  const response = await fetch("https://httpbin.org/get");
                         ^

TypeError: fetch is not a function

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

No response

What is the expected behavior?

Instead the error could say something that includes that the returned value from import must be awaited:

ReferenceError: require is not defined in ES module scope, you can use "const { default: moduleName } = await import('module_name')" instead

Or maybe

ReferenceError: require is not defined in ES module scope, see the documentation for import here: ...

Or even (not directly referencing the import itself, leading users to have to go look at the docs!)

ReferenceError: require is not defined in ES module scope, you can use ES module styled dynamic imports instead

Which the user could interpret directly and make the change:

const { default: fetch } = await import("node-fetch");
(async function main() {
  const response = await fetch("https://httpbin.org/get");
  const json = await response.json();
  console.log(json);
})();

$ node index.js                                                                                                                                                                                                       
(node:86241) ExperimentalWarning: stream/web is an experimental feature. This feature could change at any time
(Use `node --trace-warnings ...` to show where the warning was created)
{
  args: {},
  headers: {
    Accept: '*/*',
    'Accept-Encoding': 'gzip,deflate,br',
    Host: 'httpbin.org',
    'User-Agent': 'node-fetch',
    'X-Amzn-Trace-Id': 'Root=1-6171395b-7b89119e02d2082a34e20d31'
  },
  origin: '103.62.49.195',
  url: 'https://httpbin.org/get'
}

What do you see instead?

No response

Additional information

Picked up from this twitter thread https://twitter.com/jsoverson/status/1450823245146599429

I couldn't see any mention of a specific issue being created from this.

[targos]

const { default: fetch } = await import("node-fetch");

While this works, I don't think it's what we should suggest to the user.
This is what we would like the user to change their require call to:

import fetch from 'node-fetch';

[fulldecent]

I also got this error when parsing a local JSON file. Here is the new code I needed to use:

const config = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync("./config.json"));