"unexpected token import" in Nodejs5 and babel?

Question

From the babel 6 Release notes:

Since Babel is focusing on being a platform for JavaScript tooling and not an ES2015 transpiler, we’ve decided to make all of the plugins opt-in. This means when you install Babel it will no longer transpile your ES2015 code by default.

In my setup I installed the es2015 preset

npm install --save-dev babel-preset-es2015

or with yarn

yarn add babel-preset-es2015 --dev

and enabled the preset in my .babelrc

{
  "presets": ["es2015"]
}

Until modules are implemented you can use the Babel "transpiler" to run your code:

npm install --save babel-cli babel-preset-node6

and then

./node_modules/babel-cli/bin/babel-node.js --presets node6 ./your_script.js

If you dont want to type --presets node6 you can save it .babelrc file by:

{
  "presets": [
    "node6"
  ]
}

See https://www.npmjs.com/package/babel-preset-node6 and https://babeljs.io/docs/usage/cli/

1. Install packages: babel-core, babel-polyfill, babel-preset-es2015
2. Create .babelrc with contents: { "presets": ["es2015"] }
3. Do not put import statement in your main entry file, use another file eg: app.js and your main entry file should required babel-core/register and babel-polyfill to make babel works separately at the first place before anything else. Then you can require app.js where import statement.

Example:

index.js

require('babel-core/register');
require('babel-polyfill');
require('./app');

app.js

import co from 'co';

It should works with node index.js.

babel-preset-es2015 is now deprecated and you'll get a warning if you try to use Laurence's solution.

To get this working with Babel 6.24.1+, use babel-preset-env instead:

npm install babel-preset-env --save-dev

Then add env to your presets in your .babelrc:

{
  "presets": ["env"]
}

See the Babel docs for more info.