Prerendering causes a SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module - node.js

Question

I'm trying to execute prerender.ts as seen here to prerender my Angular code, but when I try and execute it using ts-node prerender.ts, I get the error:
import 'zone.js/dist/zone-node';
^^^^^^
SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module
at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:892:18)
What is the proper way to execute this from NodeJS? Here is what prerender.ts looks like:
import 'zone.js/dist/zone-node';
import * as path from 'path';
import * as fs from 'fs';
import { enableProdMode } from '#angular/core';
import { renderModuleFactory } from '#angular/platform-server';
import { AppPrerenderModuleNgFactory } from './dist-prerender/main.bundle';
const distFolder = './dist';
const index = fs
.readFileSync(path.resolve(__dirname, `${distFolder}/index.html`), 'utf8')
.toString();
// we could automate this based on the app.routes.ts file but
// to keep it simple let's just create an array with the routes we want
// to prerender
const paths = [
'/about',
'/brews',
'/consultancy'];
enableProdMode();
// for every route render the html and save it in the correct folder
paths.forEach(p => renderToHtml(p, distFolder + p));
// don't forget to overwrite the index.html as well
renderToHtml('/index.html', distFolder);
function renderToHtml(url: string, folderPath: string): void {
// Render the module with the correct url just
// as the server would do
renderModuleFactory(AppPrerenderModuleNgFactory, {
url,
document: index
}).then(html => {
// create the route directory
if (url !== '/index.html') {
fs.mkdirSync(folderPath);
}
fs.writeFile(folderPath + '/index.html', html, (err => {
if (err) {
throw err;
}
console.log(`success`);
});
});
}
Update: I found that if I used tsc to transpile prerender.ts to JavaScript first and then executed that with node, I could get past this error. However, I started getting an error which I think is indicative of this code not running within the context of ngZone. So the code is still not right.

Answer 1

As stated here:
Current node.js stable releases do not support ES modules. Additionally, ts-node does not have the required hooks into node.js to support ES modules. You will need to set "module": "commonjs" in your tsconfig.json for your code to work.
Thus, pass below compiler option:
ts-node --compiler-options '{"module": "commonjs"}' prerender.ts
Of course, you can just include "module": "commonjs" in your (root) tsconfig.json file under "compilerOptions". This way you only have to execute:
ts-node prerender.ts