rfr

node-rfr

node-rfr is a Require From (project) Root tool for Node.js.

node-rfr allows you to require modules in your project with rfr('lib/module1.js') instead of something like require('../../lib/module1.js').

Install

npm install rfr

Usage

Suppose we have a project with the following structure:

project
|--package.json
|--run.js
`--lib
   |--module1.js
   `--module2.js

If we run run.js in the project folder, we can require modules relatively like this:

var rfr = require('rfr');
var module1 = rfr('/lib/module1');
var module2 = rfr('lib/module2');  // Leading slash can be omitted.

Customize the Root

By default, the root path is the current working path where you run the program. If you want to use another path as the root, set it to the environment variable named RFR_ROOT before you require node-rfr. For example, run the program like this:

RFR_ROOT=<some_path> node run.js

Or set (or get) it with the .root property:

var rfr = require('rfr');
rfr.root = '/usr/local';  // rfr adds a tailing slash if needed.
rfr.root;                 // Gets "/usr/local/"

Or set it with the .setRoot() function:

var rfr = require('rfr');
rfr.setRoot('some_path');

An absolute path is preferred for the root. Maybe you want to use __dirname.

Details about Module Path

Use .resolve() to find the absolute path of a module without actually importing it.

var rfr = require('rfr');

var path = rfr.resolve('models');
// Returns an absolute path, for example, "/project/lib/models/index.js"

Multi-version RFR

Sometimes you may want more than one RFR. For example, one for "<project_root>/lib/" and one for "<project_root>/src/". Multi-version RFR helps. In the following example, rfr, rUsr and rEtc could have different roots.

var rfr = require('rfr');
var rUsr = require('rfr')({
  root: '/usr'
});
var rEtc = require('rfr')({
  root: '/etc'
});

rfr.setRoot('/');  // Only changes the root of the master rfr

rfr('/module');   // Requires '/module'
rUsr('/module');  // Requires '/usr/module'
rEtc('/module');  // Requires '/etc/module'

You can use .isMaster property to check whether a RFR instance is the master one.

rfr.isMaster;   // true
rUsr.isMaster;  // false
rEtc.isMaster;  // false

Change Log

2014-10-24 v1.1.1 Adds .root and .isMaster and .resolve().

2014-10-07 v1.1.0 Adds multi-version RFR support.

2014-05-01 v1.0.0 First release with require from root support.