How to take user input in Node.js – ESM not CJS

January 12, 2023

I am doing a project where I am supposed to create a JavaScript RPG CLI game using Node.js. I am supposed to use ESM and not CommonJS. Once executed, the script has to output Welcome with a menu underneath where you choose to either start the game, load or exit the game. Then, it demands user input to choose an option.

I have put type: 'module' in my package.json to use ESM. I tried with readline and with inquirer.js but nothing works. I installed inquirer.js with npm i inquirer, imported it but it doesn’t work. I literally just started this project, I basically have but few lines of the code. I don’t know where the problem is.

Here is one of the codes that I tried:

import readline from "readline";
import { stdin as input, stdout as output } from "node:process";

const run = (args) => {
  console.clear();

  console.log(`
    +-----------------------------+
    |          Welcome !          |
    +-----------------------------+
    `);
  console.log(`
    1. Start game 👍
    2. Load game 💾
    3. Exit ❌
    `);

  const rl = readline.createInterface({ input, output });

  rl.question("Your choice (1-3): ");

  rl.close();
};

export default run;

>Solution :

Does this help?

import readline from "readline";
import { stdin as input, stdout as output } from "node:process";

const run = (args) => {
  console.clear();

  console.log(`
    +-----------------------------+
    |          Welcome !          |
    +-----------------------------+
    `);
  console.log(`
    1. Start game 👍
    2. Load game 💾
    3. Exit ❌
    `);

  const rl = readline.createInterface({ 
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout
  });

  rl.question("Your choice (1-3): ", (in)=>{
    //your code here
    // example:
    switch () {
      case 1:
        start();
        break();
      case 2:
        load();
        break();
      case 3:
        exit();
        break();
    }
    rl.close()
});
};

export default run;

Of course you need to create start(), load() and exit() functions