How to avoid using relative path imports (/../../../redux/action/action1) in create-react-app

The approach in the accepted answer has now been superseded. Create React App now has a different way to set absolute paths as documented here.

To summarise, you can configure your application to support importing modules using absolute paths by doing the following:

Create/Edit your jsconfig.json/tsconfig.json in the root of your project with the following:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": "src"
  },
  "include": ["src"]
}

Once you have done this you can then import by specifying subdirectories of "src" (in the following example, components is a subdirectory of src) e.g.

import Button from 'components/Button'

After you try Ben Smith's solution above if you find eslint complains about importing absolute path add the following line to your eslint config:

settings: {
  'import/resolver': {
    node: {
      paths: ['src'],
    },
  },
},

replace 'src' with your folder if you use your own boilerplate with your folder's name.

Feb 2010
Wasted about an hour on this. An example is below:

Goal: Import App.css in HomePage.js

myapp\src\App.css
myapp\src\pages\HomePage.js

File: jsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": "src"
  }
}

File: src\pages\HomePage.js

import "App.css";

in package.json file,

eject this code in the scripts object like this..

  "scripts": {
    "start": "node scripts/start.js",
    "build": "node scripts/build.js",
    "test": "node scripts/test.js --env=jsdom",
     "eject": "NODE_PATH=src/ react-scripts eject"
  },

this will enable the absolute path imports in your app

The alias solution for craco or rewired create-react-app is react-app-alias for systems as: craco, react-app-rewired, customize-cra

According docs of mentioned systems replace react-scripts in package.json and configure next:

react-app-rewired

// config-overrides.js
const {aliasWebpack, aliasJest} = require('react-app-alias')

const options = {} // default is empty for most cases

module.exports = aliasWebpack(options)
module.exports.jest = aliasJest(options)

craco

// craco.config.js
const {CracoAliasPlugin} = require('react-app-alias')

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      plugin: CracoAliasPlugin,
      options: {}
    }
  ]
}

all

Configure aliases in json like this:

// tsconfig.paths.json
{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "paths": {
      "example/*": ["example/src/*"],
      "@library/*": ["library/src/*"]
    }
  }
}

And add this file in extends section of main typescript config file:

// tsconfig.json
{
  "extends": "./tsconfig.paths.json",
  // ...
}

None of the answers worked for me. Some didn't work at all and others worked but the import was already inside src, for example:

import something from 'path/to/file'.

Whereas I wanted to be able to do:

import something from 'src/path/to/file'

Here is how I solved it:

tsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    // ...
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "rootDirs": [
      "src"
    ]
  },
  "include": [
    "src"
  ]
}