The use of multiple loaders in Node

Question

In Node, the loader can be used to hook into the module loading process and intercept the import or require statements. This feature is useful, but sometimes you may need to use multiple loaders. For example, you are using a loader based on ESBuild, ts-node or SWC to load your "normal" test code, but then you find that you also want to use Quibble to intercept calls to certain ESM modules.

Currently, direct support for using multiple loaders is not possible, although work is in progress, so I would like to know how to achieve this with some workarounds. I guess one approach would be to write a wrapper to delegate between different loaders, or take the output of one loader as input to another?

I see that the loader's API seems to be handleable, but any practical tips on how to achieve this would be appreciated :)

Answer 1

It seems I was wrong when I said you can't use multiple loaders today. It's just that the API is (as it always has been) marked experimental and unstable. You can think of it as a series of handlers connected to each other, just like using require:

node \
  --experimental-loader unpkg \
  --experimental-loader http-to-https \
  --experimental-loader cache-buster

This answer is not complete yet, so I will add to it when I learn more (or someone else can edit it).