For those seeing

Failed to load external module ts-node/register
Failed to load external module typescript-node/register
Failed to load external module typescript-register
Failed to load external module typescript-require
Failed to load external module sucrase/register/ts
Failed to load external module @babel/register
Error: Cannot find module 'ts-node/register'
...
SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

for me the fix was that I was missing ts-node from my package.json. A simple

npm install -D ts-node

was all I needed.

@abcd-ca You can use:

TS_NODE_COMPILER_OPTIONS='{ "module": "commonjs" }' knex migrate:latest

knex uses ts-node’s require hook for .ts extension and that can accept TS compiler options through TS_NODE_COMPILER_OPTIONS env variable. These options will be merged into what you have in your tsconfig.json.

@abcd-ca I resolved it below code.

const extension =
  process.env.NODE_CONFIG_ENV === 'production' || process.env.NODE_CONFIG_ENV === 'staging'
    ? 'js'
    : 'ts';

console.log('extension ============> ', extension);

  migrations: {
    tableName: 'knex_migrations',
    extension: extension,
    directory: path.join(BASE_PATH, 'migrations'),
    disableMigrationsListValidation: true,
    loadExtensions: [`.${extension}`],
  },
  seeds: {
    extension: extension,
    directory: path.join(BASE_PATH, 'seeds'),
  },

@lorefnon That gave me this alternative idea:

created a tsconfig.knexcli.json containing an override for module,

{
  "extends": "./tsconfig",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "module": "commonjs"
  }
}

Then when running my commands,

TS_NODE_PROJECT=tsconfig.knexcli.json knex migrate:latest

Just slightly cleaner because the JSON when in an npm script needs to escape the quotes and gets a bit busy looking. Thanks!

@prk3 If you specify loadExtensions: ['.js'] in the config for production env it should work as expected.

The default value of loadExtensions comes from here which will have to be overridden if you have some files matching those extensions which you don’t want to process.

Hello @prk3 I have the same problem, when run knex migrate in heroku cli

Running knex --knexfile knexfile.ts migrate:latest on ⬢ backend-ecolab... up, run.5056 (Free)
Failed to load external module ts-node/register
Failed to load external module typescript-node/register
Failed to load external module typescript-register
Failed to load external module typescript-require
Failed to load external module sucrase/register/ts
Failed to load external module @babel/register
Error: Cannot find module 'ts-node/register'
Require stack:
- /app/knexfile.ts
- /app/node_modules/knex/bin/cli.js
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:966:15)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:842:27)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1026:19)
    at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:72:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/app/knexfile.ts:1:1)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1138:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1158:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:986:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:879:14)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1026:19)

Still having issues with this.

This is the error I am getting:

SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

@abcd-ca’s method of

    "module": "commonjs",

in tsconfig.json worked for me as well

~I just noticed that 0.21.1 in the changelog has a bug fix that looks related which I suspect might be causing this side effect issue.~

This was incorrect, I tried with 0.21.0 and it didn’t fix it. I got the knexfile.ts to work with the import by changing "module": "esnext" to "module": "commonjs" in tsconfig.json. The problem is in my case is that I am using Next.js 9 (9.4.0) and when I run the app, Next.js changes the module setting back to esnext which is apparently a known issue. So, I think this is not a knex problem but if you don’t know that module must be commonjs then you’re in trouble – I’d recommend adding it to the docs.

I resolve with:

yarn add ts-node -D

and add in package.json scripts:

{
  "scripts": {
     ...,
     "knex": "TS_NODE_COMPILER_OPTIONS='{ \"module\": \"commonjs\" }' npx knex"
  }
}

now use yarn knex <your command>