Require Hook · Babel

One of the ways you can use babel is through the require hook. The require hook will bind itself to node's require and automatically transpile files on the fly. This is equivalent to CoffeeScript's coffee-script/register.

Not suitable for libraries

The require hook automatically hooks itself into all node requires. This will pollute the global scope and introduce conflicts. Because of this it's not suitable for libraries, if however you're writing an application then it's completely fine to use.

Install

$ npm install babel

Usage

require("babel/register");

All subsequent files required by node with the extensions .es6, .es, .jsx and .js will be transformed by babel. The polyfill is also automatically required.

NOTE: By default all requires to node_modules will be ignored. You can override this by passing an ignore regex via:

require("babel/register")({
  // This will override `node_modules` ignoring - you can alternatively pass
  // a regex
  ignore: false
});

Register Options

require("babel/register")({
  // Optional ignore regex - if any filenames **do** match this regex then they
  // aren't compiled
  ignore: /regex/,

  // Optional only regex - if any filenames **don't** match this regex then they
  // aren't compiled
  only: /my_es6_folder/,

  // See options above for usage
  whitelist: [],
  blacklist: [],

  // Setting this will remove the currently hooked extensions of .es6, `.es`, `.jsx`
  // and .js so you'll have to add them back if you want them to be used again.
  extensions: [".es6", ".es", ".jsx", ".js"]
});