[SOLVED] How can I use dynamic import() in a CommonJS build with NestJS, specifically for the @octokit/rest library?

How can I use dynamic import() in a CommonJS build with NestJS, specifically for the @octokit/rest library?

I'm working with a NestJS project and I need to use the @octokit/rest library, which is an ES module. However, my project is set up to build in CommonJS. When trying to use the library with require(), I run into an error because the @octokit/rest library doesn't support CommonJS imports.

To solve this, I tried using dynamic import() within a CommonJS environment, but after building the project, the import() is still being compiled in a way that doesn’t work with CommonJS. Here's what I tried:

async createRepository(accessToken: string, repositoryName: string) {
    const { Octokit } = await import('@octokit/rest');
    const octokit = new Octokit({
        auth: accessToken,
    });

    const response = await octokit.repos.createForAuthenticatedUser({
        name: repositoryName,
    });

    return response.data;
}

Error encountered:

Error [ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: require() of ES Module C:\Users\...\node_modules\@octokit\rest\dist-src\index.js from C:\Users\...\dist\app.service.js not supported.

How can I ensure that @octokit/rest is imported dynamically in a CommonJS build without causing compatibility issues? Is there a way to make dynamic imports work in this setup, or is there a better approach for using ES modules in a CommonJS project?

Solution

for nodejs v22+ you can just use the --experimental-require-module nodejs flag. So:
nest start -e "node --experimental-require-module" should be enough

note that Jest doesn't support this flag and so it will fail