I have the following application structure:
application
|- config
|----- config.js
|- routes
|------ api
|-----------router.js
|- Application.js
|- package.json
In /routes/api/router.js module I need to require /config/config.js file and do the following:
require('../../config/config.js');
I found the code above ugly and want to make it more pretty. Also if I move /routes/api/router.js
to another folder I have to refactor all requires. What is the best practices to require that modules and is it possible to require config.js from application folder root, something like the following:
require('/config/config.js');
Thanks.
I have the following application structure:
application
|- config
|----- config.js
|- routes
|------ api
|-----------router.js
|- Application.js
|- package.json
In /routes/api/router.js module I need to require /config/config.js file and do the following:
require('../../config/config.js');
I found the code above ugly and want to make it more pretty. Also if I move /routes/api/router.js
to another folder I have to refactor all requires. What is the best practices to require that modules and is it possible to require config.js from application folder root, something like the following:
require('/config/config.js');
Thanks.
Share Improve this question edited Aug 3, 2014 at 19:36 Erik asked Aug 3, 2014 at 19:16 ErikErik 14.8k49 gold badges140 silver badges223 bronze badges3 Answers
Reset to default 3There are a few ways to get around this problem. One is to put all your shared code (like config.js
) in a directory under node_modules
(using lib
here in case you want to have directories other than config
in there):
application
|- node_modules
|----- lib
|---------- config
|-------------- config.js
|- routes
|------ api
|-----------router.js
|- Application.js
|- package.json
So then you could require config.js using require( 'lib/config/config.js' )
.
Alternatively, you could create a lib
symlink in node_modules
and link it to lib in your application directory structure:
application
|- node_modules
|----- lib -> ../../lib
|- lib
|------ config
|---------- config.js
|- routes
|------ api
|-----------router.js
|- Application.js
|- package.json
One other alternative, which unfortunately is discouraged by the node docs, is to use NODE_PATH
which lets you specify directories that node's require()
algorithm should look into. Following the same pattern as above with lib
, you would do:
application
|- lib
|------ config
|---------- config.js
|- routes
|------ api
|-----------router.js
|- Application.js
|- package.json
and set NODE_PATH
equal to $path_to_application/lib
.
UPDATE
Found this great discussion on the topic which includes the options above as well as a few other ones.
The easiest solution is to use path.resolve. If you only give relative paths to path.resolve
then it assumes they are relative to the current working directory, i.e. the project root. So all you need is:
const path = require('path');
path.resolve('config/config.js');
require('/config/config.js');
will not work as you are using the root of the system(os) not the root of the application.
var path=require('path');
var root=path.dirname(process.mainModule.filename);
or
var root=process.cwd();
will give you the root of the application. To navigate to config.js
path.resolve(root,'config/config.js)