[Bug?]: API routes do not import objects properly from "use server" files.

[elliotwaite]

Duplicates

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Latest version

• I have tested the latest version

Current behavior 😯

If I have an API route that imports an object from a file that has "use server" at the top of it, it does not properly import the object and instead imports an empty object.

Demo on StackBlitz here.

Is this a bug, or am I using "use server" incorrectly? I thought that adding "use server" to the top of the file meant that the contents of that file would only be available server-side. And since API routes only run server-side, I thought they would still be able to import from those files. But when I add "user server" to the top of the files I'm importing from, it seems to break things.

Expected behavior 🤔

For API routes to be able to import from files that have "use server" at the top of them.

Steps to reproduce 🕹

Steps:

1. Open this StackBlitz demo.
2. Run pnpm dev
3. Click the different links to see the different returned values from the API routes.

[lxsmnsyc]

Must be a bundling issue

[ryansolid]

"use server" top of the file means these are RPC functions that are exported so any import in the client will call them as fetch requests. It is not a general mechanism to say things are server only. I imagine it is an empty object because we wrap every export with a proxy that is looking for specific properties. So in a sense I guess it might be working if I had the proxy do passthrough. However, it is misleading because it isn't guaranteed to be server only. While it might be hard for us to determine this at compile time I think we should probably error at runtime on the server if we notice that what we get isn't a function.

[ryansolid]

I've added an error to the server registration of server functions which should help make this clearer. So we need better docs in general. But I'm closing this by design.

[elliotwaite]

Ah, I see. I was misunderstanding what "use server" did. Thanks for the explanation.