"Illegal Module Name" for external URL

[chowey]

I have a source file with an external import, like so:

// source.js
import config from "/api/config?a=1&b=2";
// do some stuff with config

I try to build it with the --bundle and --external:"/api/config?a=1&b=2" flags. I get the following error:

error: Invalid module name: "/api/config?a=1&b=2"

This does work with other build systems (e.g. TypeScript or Babel). The external module is supposed to be resolved by the browser at runtime.

Am I doing something wrong? Is this not supported?

[evanw]

Right now the --external flag is only for excluding modules, not arbitrary paths. There is already an open feature request for having --external support relative paths: #127. It looks like this request is similar but slightly different because it's for absolute paths, not relative paths.