npm package discovery and stats viewer.

Discover Tips

  • General search

    [free text search, go nuts!]

  • Package details

    pkg:[package-name]

  • User packages

    @[username]

Sponsor

Optimize Toolset

I’ve always been into building performant and accessible sites, but lately I’ve been taking it extremely seriously. So much so that I’ve been building a tool to help me optimize and monitor the sites that I build to make sure that I’m making an attempt to offer the best experience to those who visit them. If you’re into performant, accessible and SEO friendly sites, you might like it too! You can check it out at Optimize Toolset.

About

Hi, 👋, I’m Ryan Hefner  and I built this site for me, and you! The goal of this site was to provide an easy way for me to check the stats on my npm packages, both for prioritizing issues and updates, and to give me a little kick in the pants to keep up on stuff.

As I was building it, I realized that I was actually using the tool to build the tool, and figured I might as well put this out there and hopefully others will find it to be a fast and useful way to search and browse npm packages as I have.

If you’re interested in other things I’m working on, follow me on Twitter or check out the open source projects I’ve been publishing on GitHub.

I am also working on a Twitter bot for this site to tweet the most popular, newest, random packages from npm. Please follow that account now and it will start sending out packages soon–ish.

Open Software & Tools

This site wouldn’t be possible without the immense generosity and tireless efforts from the people who make contributions to the world and share their work via open source initiatives. Thank you 🙏

© 2024 – Pkg Stats / Ryan Hefner

locreq

v2.4.1

Published

Require local modules without all that '../../../' BS

Downloads

249

Readme

locreq

locreq is an answer to the problem of requiring local paths in Node.js. It allows you to easily require modules by specifying their paths relative to your project root, not relative to the file they're required from.

Assume the following directory structure:

- lib
  - collectionA
	- moduleA1.js
	- moduleA2.js
  - collectionB
	- collectionB1
	  - moduleB1a.js

Now, to require module A2.js from module B1a.js, using regular require:

require("../../collectionA/moduleA2.js");

There are a few problems with the above example:

  • it has a high cognitive overhead;
  • when you move the B1a.js file, you have to update the argument to require;
  • it's hard to search for all files that require the A2 module.

With locreq, it's easier:

const locreq = require("locreq")(__dirname);
locreq("lib/collectionA/moduleA2.js");

If you have lots of dependencies, locreq can really make a difference.

Installation & usage

To install locreq, use:

npm install --save locreq

To use the module, require it like so:

const locreq = require("locreq")(__dirname);

The (__dirname); part is very important, don't forget it!

Next, simply use locreq instead of require for your local modules, giving a path relative to the root of your package (that is, relative to the directory where the package.json of your project is):

var moduleA = locreq("lib/my-modules/moduleA.js");

Similar to regular require, you can also use the locreq.resolve method:

const module_path = locreq.resolve("lib/my-modules/moduleA.js"); //returns the absolute path to the module

How does it work?

  1. locreq goes up the directory hierarchy, parent directory by parent directory
  2. Once it finds a package.json it stops the search and treats the directory as the root directory of the package
  3. It then performs a regular require on a path that's resolved from combining the package root directory and the path given as an argument, and then returns that.

Advantages

  • it works even if your package is required by a different package (which is not the case for the require.main.require trick);
  • it doesn't mess with the global scope;
  • it doesn't need changes in environment variables;
  • it doesn't need any additional start-up scripts;
  • it doesn't overwrite the default require behavior.