'require' method

[Eric Marshall]

Hi All,

I looked up the source code of Node.js to get more details about 'require'. And found this is the function definition of 'require': 

function require (moduleName) {} 

The function body is empty. How can this function load a module?

Thank you for your help!

Eric

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 22, 2014, at 11:09 PM, Eric Marshall wrote:

> I looked up the source code of Node.js to get more details about 'require'. And found this is the function definition of 'require':
>
> function require (moduleName) {}
>
> The function body is empty. How can this function load a module?

In what file did you see that definition?

[Andrey]

Hi Eric!

Usually "require" is a reference to this function: https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/a5778cdf01425ae39cea80b62f9ec6740aec724a/lib/module.js#L362

It's passed to your script as wrapper function parameter when you require it - https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/a5778cdf01425ae39cea80b62f9ec6740aec724a/lib/module.js#L459

(or, if it's main script - from runMain https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/a5778cdf01425ae39cea80b62f9ec6740aec724a/lib/module.js#L499)

Inside module.js itself, "require" is a reference to a much simpler function NativeModule.require - https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/a5778cdf01425ae39cea80b62f9ec6740aec724a/src/node.js#L752

which is only able to load modules from process.binding('natives') hash (it's populated with content of ./lib folder by this action https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/a5778cdf01425ae39cea80b62f9ec6740aec724a/node.gyp#L414 and this script: https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/a5778cdf01425ae39cea80b62f9ec6740aec724a/tools/js2c.py )

Cheers,

Andrey