local-require

Problem

Working in large node.js project usually contain complex and nested directory structure. Directory structure helps in organizing your code but it bring many drawback with that. This module solve one of the drawback, To understand problem lets consider following directory structure

projecct_name
|
|-foo
|  |-foo1
|  |   |-f1.js
|  |-f.js
|     
|-bar
|  |-bar1
|  |  |-b1.js
|  |-b.js
|
|_server.js

many time we endup requiring f.js and f1.js in b1.js (may be it is result of bad programming but this is not point). Given nature of node.js we will be doing somethign like require('../../foo/foo1/f1.js'). Problem with this is require statement is solely depend on directory structure if position of f1.js changes then above require method wont work. and if we are requiring f1.js from various part of code then we have to give relative path from module. which might be painful.

Solution

My solution is simple it uses awesomeness of require. node.js find modules in particular fashion algorithm is explain in doc. Given the nature of algorithm any thing in node_modules folder can access without relative path. So at start of your server (usually in server.js) just create symboliclink to your local files in node_module folder then you can access these local file without relative path from anywhere in codebase. But all symbolic link in node_modules folder wont look nice and it will hard to maintain. So why not create directory for these symbolicslink of local files and access them by directory_name/file_name.

Installation

npm install local-require

Test

npm test

Api

local-require module provides nonblocking api.

var lrequire = require('local-require');
lrequire.register(opts, function (err) {
  if (err) {
      //problem in creating symlink
  } else {
      //ready to use awesomeness of local-require
  }
});

Or you can also use blocking api

var lrequire = require('local-require')
lrequire.registerSync(opts);

as any nice blocking api this will throws an exception if any thing went wrong.

where opts is

{
  namespace: 'demo',     //required, directory in which you want to add all symlink
  basedir  : __direname  //optional, directory from which function called default : process.cwd()
  config   : {             
     'f1' : './foo/foo1/f1/js',
     'bar1': './bar/bar1' 
  }                     //requied , it is an object in which name and location mapping done 
}

So you can add f1.js from any part of codebase by require('demo/f1'). We can also use this method to include directory by require('demo/bar1')

Use of namespace here is just to segregate symboliclink files which will lead to simple maintain.You can create any number of namespace just avoid conlicting name with previous namespace or installed package name

ToDo

• if you have use same namespace more than once, last namespace options will override, which also means it will override any install package who has same name as your namespace we can handle these condition more civilized way.

Contribution

please contribute, You can contribute by either creating issue or just send pull request for feature you want to include in module.

License

(The MIT License)