Can't use absolute paths for import?

Question

Bear with me, I'm not sure if this is purely a React Native issue, or just an ES6 question in general. But I noticed I'm unable to do this:

import {navBarRouteMapper} from '/src/helpers';

I get an error saying it's unable to resolve the module. I have to do this instead:

import {navBarRouteMapper} from '../../../src/helpers';

Keeping track of folder depth can get a bit unmanageable as the complexity of the app grows. Why am I not able to use an absolute path?

EDIT:

I see people are recommending adding babel, but I don't want to pollute React Native's system. There's obviously transpilation to ES6 already going on. I was hoping for a solution specific to the React Native ecosystem.

Answer 1

There is actually a pretty clean solution for React Native, have a look here: https://medium.com/@davidjwoody/how-to-use-absolute-paths-in-react-native-6b06ae3f65d1#.u47sl3p8x.

TL;DR:

You'll just have to create a package.json file in your src/helpers folder:

{
   "name": "@helpers" 
}

And you will be able to import it from anywhere:

import { navBarRouteMapper } from '@helpers'