The Troubled Programmer

Node Module’s exports and module.exports are the same, except when they are not.

IO AND MODULES are the two defining things Node brings to the table. This quick post is about module authoring in Node. Modules provide scope and efficient code sharing. Code in a Node module runs in its own scope and the module exports a clearly defined interface which, in JavaScript of course, is an Object—or two objects rather, raising a classical question in Node:

What is the difference between exports and module.exports?

Consulting the docs:

The module.exports object is created by the Module system. Sometimes this is not acceptable; many want their module to be an instance of some class. To do this assign the desired export object to module.exports. Note that assigning the desired object to exports will simply rebind the local exports variable, which is probably not what you want to do.

Meaning, initially exports and module.exports are the same. Once you assign something else to exports—not the same anymore—duh! This explains why you commonly see:

module.exports = exports = Something

function Something () {
  // Details
}

Folks assign module.exports and exports simultaneously to allow continious use of the exports alias.

module.exports is the Object received by requiring your module, while exports is an alias to the module.exports created by the Module system—it`s one of those sugary conveniences that shouldn’t exist in the first place. I recommend to ignore it entirely, complying with the docs:

As a guideline, if the relationship between exports and module.exports seems like magic to you, ignore exports and only use module.exports.

There’s more to say about modules, but today I’d rather end on a tangent: Avoid cyclic dependencies! Cyclic dependencies manifest poorly designed modularity—SoC.