Autorequire

Autorequire provides a means of defining a consistent file and directory structure for your Node.js packages. It does not force any one structure upon you - instead, it provides common conventions, and the ability to define your own if they do not suit.

At its heart, autorequire is an extensible replacement for Node's require(). It also provides a simple way of navigating a node package (from within and out), using the package's directory structure as a guide, and the convention to assist in naming modules.

When interacting with an autorequired Node package, each module and directory is lazy-loaded and then memoized upon reference. This ensures that it is a minimal performance hit.

Usage

To use autorequire for your package, at its most basic, is just the following in your index:

module.exports = require('autorequire')('./lib');

That's it! You no longer need to require the core Node modules in any of your project's source files, nor do they need to require each other. Consumers of your Node.js package require it normally, and should not notice a difference.

Defining Custom Conventions

Should the default convention not suit your needs, there are several more defined. You can specify a built-in convention by passing its name as the second argument to autorequire:

module.exports = require('autorequire')('./lib', 'Classical');

Or, should you want to override a specific piece of the convention, you can inherit from the default convention. Or, for ease, you can simply pass a hash of instance methods, and autorequire will manage the inheritance for you:

module.exports = require('autorequire')('./lib', {
  directoryToProperty: function(directoryName, parentPath) {
    return this.underscore(directoryName);
  }
});

For a full reference of the methods that a convention can define, see the docs for the default convention.

Notes

The caveat to autorequire is that every autorequired module is loaded within a sandboxed environment via vm's runInNewContext. This is so that lazy-loaded modules do not pollute the global context for everyone. It's also a good practice for Node.js projects to adhere to.