SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

When you use ECMAScript Modules in Node (v13.6.0 for me) combined with Jest, the following error occurs:

SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

      at ScriptTransformer._transformAndBuildScript (node_modules/@jest/transform/build/ScriptTransformer.js:537:17)
      at ScriptTransformer.transform (node_modules/@jest/transform/build/ScriptTransformer.js:579:25)

Here is the test code I am trying to execute.

import { checks } from '../../../../src/utils/index.js'

describe('Array type check', () => {
    test('to return false when not an array', () => {
        expect(checks.array('string')).toEqual(false)
    })
})

I suspect the issue is Jest is not configured to run Node code using “type: module” (ECMAScript Modules).

[smpeters]

A more complete set of steps is:

1. npm i --save-dev jest babel-jest @babel/preset-env
2. add the follow to the module.exports in your jest.config.js

transform: {
    "^.+\\.jsx?$": "babel-jest"
  },

1. create a babel.config.json file with the following

{
  "presets": ["@babel/preset-env"]
}

After this, I was able to get files with imports working just fine.

[ziishaned]

I resolved the issue by doing the following:

yarn add ts-jest -D

then in your jest.config.js file put following:

module.exports = {
  transform: {
    '^.+\\.ts?$': 'ts-jest',
  },
};