Can Wildcards Simplify Importing Modules from Multiple Files in JavaScript?

Using Wildcards to Import Modules from All Files in a Directory

Despite ES6's ability to import specific exports from files using individual import statements, managing multiple imports from multiple files can become cumbersome. To streamline organization, developers may prefer to have one module per file. However, traditional import methods for such scenarios result in verbose imports with separate statements for each module.

To address this, some developers have considered the hypothetical possibility of utilizing wildcards in import statements to retrieve modules from all files within a specified directory. Specifically, they desire a syntax such as:

import {ThingA, ThingB, ThingC} from 'lib/things/*';

This hypothetical approach hinges on the assumption that each file contains a single default export and shares the same name as its corresponding module. However, as it stands, the ES6 module system does not provide direct support for wildcard imports.

While the proposed approach is currently infeasible, it's worth noting that the resolution of module names is handled by module loaders. Therefore, there is potential for a module loader implementation to emerge in the future that could enable such wildcard imports.

In the absence of built-in support, a workaround solution involves creating an intermediate "module file," for example, lib/things/index.js, which would contain the following:

export * from 'ThingA';
export * from 'ThingB';
export * from 'ThingC';

This approach would allow developers to use a simplified import statement:

import {ThingA, ThingB, ThingC} from 'lib/things';

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