Can i use Babel Require Hook in production for ES6?

Question

I have a node app that uses ES6. I'm using Babel for transpiling. As far as i understand use a build system like Gulp for example or use the require hook . The Require Hook approach seems appealing to me since i will be able to keep my source files in ES6 but still execute them using node server.js without the use of some build system.

This seems extremely useful for develop at least, my main concerns is about the use of this approach in production.

• Does it have any penalty hit every time that a user makes a request ?
• How this works exactly ?

For context i'm using it with an Express app.

Answer 1

Does it have any penalty hit every time that a user makes a request ?

No, not in the sense that it would have to re-transpile the code on every request.

How this works exactly ?

The require hook basically hi-jacks all subsequent calls to require(), and performs the ES6->ES5 transpiling prior to that module being executed.

I've been using the babel require hook in production for awhile now (with moderate traffic levels -- peak traffic in the mid-hundreds req/sec range), and it's never been an issue.