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require-dir-all

Yet another Node.js helper to require all files in directory. Useful when needed to require group of files in same directory(-ies) with similar functionality, like routes, controllers, middlewares, models, config, gulp tasks etc.

Inspired by require-all and require-dir packages. Both of them are good, but the first of them lacks relative paths support (need to use __dirname) and always recursive, while the second one lacks file/dir filtering, for some reason store modules in non-hierarchical structure, taking only one file from several ones with the same name and it is not possible to automatically run function on each require'd file.

If you have different needs regarding the functionality, please add a feature request.

Installation

npm install --save require-dir-all

Usage

Upgrade 0.2.x to 0.3

For the files and directories with the same name behavior is changed from overwrite to merge. That means if you have in the same directory file and subdirectory with any content, this content wll be merged with the content of the file. If the file contains object, then keys of object will be merged. However, if the file returns non-object, for example string, it will completely hide the content of the directory with same name. If you set indexAsParent: true, index file returning non-object will hide all subdirectories.

Use cases

There are several most common cases to use this module. In all of them some part of the application is splitted into several smaller modules with the same initialization logic and similar functionality. Modules may be grouped into subdirectories. Typical examples are

  • Routes (controllers, middlewares) for express application, models and datasources;
  • Gulp tasks. If you want to see an examples how to use require-dir-all in Gulp files, you may look to gulp-simple and gulp-advanced in demo subdirectory of the module.
  • Config files. If your need is to structure one huge config file into several smaller config files, while keeping your code clean, you may go directly to separate article config files how-to illustrating the idea.
  • etc

Basic usage

var modules = require('require-dir-all')('directory_to_require');

Now variable modules will contain exported values from all the modules .js, .json, .coffee in directory accessible by its properties, for example modules.module1 as if they were require'd like:

modules = {
  module1: require('module1')
  module2: require('module2')
}

If you need more than one directory to require, you can provide array of directories:

var modules = require('require-dir-all')(['dir1', 'dir2']);

Resulting variable modules will be array of objects with module's exports, equivalent to:

modules = [
  { module1: require('dir1/module1') },
  { module2: require('dir2/module2') }
]

Parameters

var modules = require('require-dir-all')(
  'directory_to_require', // relative or absolute directory 
  { // options
    recursive:     false,                          // recursively go through subdirectories; default value shown
    indexAsParent: false,                          // add content of index.js/index.json files to parent object, not to parent.index
    includeFiles:  /^.*\.(js|json|coffee)$/,       // RegExp to select files; default value shown
    excludeDirs:   /^(\.git|\.svn|node_modules)$/  // RegExp to ignore subdirectories; default value shown
    map: function(reqModule) { /* you may postprocess the name of property the module will be stored and exported object */ return reqModule; }
   }
);

relOrAbsDir

Relative or absolute directory to start from. If array is provided, the result will be array of objects corresponding to each directory.

Options

You may provide additional options using second optional parameter:

Options:

  • recursive - recursively go through subdirectories; optional; default: false
  • indexAsParent - exports of 'index' files will be added directly to object corresponding to directory with this 'index' file, not to its child object named 'index' (as by default); optional; default: false
  • throwNoDir - throw exception if require'ing directory does not exists; optional; default: true
  • includeFiles - reg exp to include files; optional; default: /^.*\.(js|json|coffee)$/, which means to require only .js, .json, .coffee files
  • excludeDirs - reg exp to exclude subdirectories (when recursive: true ); optional; default: /^(\.(git|svn)|(node_modules))$/, which means to exclude directories .git, .svn, node_modules while going recursively
  • _parentsToSkip: number of parent modules to skip in order to find calling module; optional; default: 0 (i.e.consider parent as calling)
  • map: function to postprocess each require'd file (for more details see map option descripion below); optional; default: null

Tips

Typical task is to run the function for each module required from the directory (like init or shutdown routines). With this module it is needed to reqursively go through all the properties (i.e.module's exports) and run the function for each of them

If you need to wait until the end of initialization of all the modules, using async (assuming each module's initialize method accepts callback as a parameter).

Please, be aware, that the examples below iterates only files at top level (as there is no recursion)

Require'd files modules/module1.js and modules/module2.js

var path = require('path'),
  fileExt = path.extname(module.filename),
  fileBase  = path.basename(module.filename, fileExt);

module.exports = {
  initialize: function(cb) {
    console.log('module ' + fileBase + ' initialized');
    return cb(false, 'result from '+fileBase);
  }
};

Require'ing file index.js:

var _ = require('lodash');
var async = require('async');
var modules = require('require-dir-all')('modules');

var initialize = function(callback) {
  var initializers = [];

  _.forOwn(modules, function(module) {
    initializers.push( function(cb) { return module.initialize(cb); } );
  });

  async.parallel(initializers, callback);
};

initialize(function(err, results) {
  console.log('initialize done; results:', results);
});

/*
Output:

module module1 initialized
module module2 initialized
initialize done; results: [ 'result from module1', 'result from module2' ]
*/

If you do not need to wait till the finish of initialization of both modules:

var _ = require('lodash');
var modules = require('require-dir-all')('modules');

module.exports.initialize = function() {
  _.forOwn(modules, function(module) {
      module.initialize(); ;
  });
};

See demo/06_initializers for an example

Simple

If you need to require all the .js, .json, .coffee files in the directory modules, add following line:

var modules = require('require-dir-all')('modules');

or if you like:

var require_dir_all = require('require-dir-all');
var modules = require_dir_all('modules');

Object modules will be populated with properties which names will correspond to module names and values - to exported objects. Traditional equivalent:

modules = {
  module1: require('module1')
  module2: require('module2')
}

By default directories .git, .svn, node_modules are excluded.

Example

Assume you have following structure:

modules/
    module1.js
    module2.js
app.js

File module1.js exports:

module.exports = 'string exported from module 1';

File module2.js exports:

module.exports = 'string exported from module 2';

In app.js:

var modules = require('require-dir-all')('modules');

console.log('modules:', modules);

Result:

modules: { 
  module1: 'string exported from module 1', 
  module2: 'string exported from module 2' 
}

You can find this example in demo/01_simple/ To run it:

cd demo/01_simple/
npm install
node app

Recursive

Option recursive: true allows to require recursively the directory and all its subdirectories.

Example

You can find this example in demo/04_recursive/

Directory structure:

$ ls -R demo/04_recursive/modules/
demo/04_recursive/modules/:
dir1  dir.a.b.c  excluded  excluded.2  module1.js  module2.js

demo/04_recursive/modules/dir1:
dir2  module3.js

demo/04_recursive/modules/dir1/dir2:
module4.js

demo/04_recursive/modules/dir.a.b.c:
module5.js

demo/04_recursive/modules/excluded:
excluded.js

demo/04_recursive/modules/excluded.2:
excluded.js

File app.js:

'use strict';

var modules = require('require-dir-all')(
  'modules', {
    recursive: true,
    excludeDirs: /^excluded.*$/
  }
);

console.log('modules:', JSON.stringify(modules, null, 2));

Output:

modules: {
  "dir.a.b.c": {
    "module5": "string exported from module 5"
  },
  "dir1": {
    "dir2": {
      "module4": "string exported from module 4"
    },
    "module3": "string exported from module 3"
  },
  "module1": "string exported from module 1",
  "module2": "string exported from module 2"
}

Map

Option map allows to define function to run for each require'd file.

Object properties.

These properties may be changed:

  • name - module name to be stored in result object
  • exports - module's exports value

These properties are read-only:

  • filepath - full filename with absolute path,
  • base - base part of file name,
  • ext - file extension

Assume you have following structure:

modules/
  module1
  module2

If each file module1.js, module2.js in modules directory exports a constructor to which the some config parameters are passed like this:

'use strict';

// Object constructor
var Object1 = function(config) {
  this.name = 'Object1';
  this.config = config;
};

// Exporting constructor function
module.exports = Object1;

and the code which require's these files in app_old.js is like following:

// configs for each module
var config1 = { value: 'config1' },
  config2 = 'config2';

// require all the needed files
var module1 = new (require('./modules/module1'))(config1),
  module2 = new (require('./modules/module2'))(config2);

console.log('object from module1:', module1);
console.log('object from module2:', module2);

You may replace this with following code:

// Store config for each module in config object properties
// with property names corresponding to module names
var config = {
  module1: { value: 'config1' },
  module2: { value: 'config2' }
};

// Require all files in modules subdirectory
var modules = require('require-dir-all')(
  'modules', // Directory to require
  {          // Options
    map: function(reqModule) {
      // define function to be post-processed over exported object for each require'd module
      reqModule.exports =
        // create new object with corresponding config passed to constructor
         new reqModule.exports( config[reqModule.name] );
      // Also you may change the property name if needed
      // reqModule.name = 'prefix_'+reqModule.name;
    }
  }
);

console.log('modules:', JSON.stringify(modules, null, 2));

Result:

modules: {
  "module1": {
    "name": "Object1",
    "config": {
      "value": "config1"
    }
  },
  "module2": {
    "name": "Object2",
    "config": {
      "value": "config2"
    }
  }
}

You can find this example in demo/05_map/ To run it:

cd demo/05_map/
npm install
node app

Run all demos:

cd demo
./all_demos.sh

Run tests (and other checks):

npm test

Run tests only:

npm _test

TODO

  • Add support for glob-like definitions?
// from http://stackoverflow.com/a/28976201/2774010
var glob = require( 'glob' )
  , path = require( 'path' );

glob.sync( './routes/**/*.js' ).forEach( function( file ) {
  require( path.resolve( file ) );
});
  • Restructure README.md to make it more readable.

Credits

Alexander

Links to package pages:

github.com   npmjs.com   travis-ci.org   coveralls.io   inch-ci.org

License

MIT

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Yet another Node.js helper to require all files in directory

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