EPR: A utility for simplifying node paths

So let’s say you’ve got a node project, with a structure somewhat like this:

- project/
  - package.json
  - server.js
  - lib/
    - file1.js
    - file2.js
    - models/
      - model1.js
      - model2.js
  - spec/
    - file1Spec.js
    - file2Spec.js
    - models/
      - model1Spec.js
      - model2Spec.js

Your require statements in your specs can easily get very ugly:

var model1 = require('../../lib/models/model1')

They’re also fragile — if you move either your spec file or your implementation file, you’ve got to update your requires. This is a good argument for using lots of small modules that can be broken out — if a module lives in your node_modules folder then requireing it is always easy:

var file1 = require('file1')

The problem is that when you’re writing an app lots of the code can’t really be seperated out to tiny modules — it’s app-specific. There have been a few suggestions on how to address this problem, but epr is my attempt at solving it in a nice, repeatable way.

EPR works by making symlinks in your node_modules folder. It gets the list of symlinks to create from your package.json file. So for the above example, you could add the following to your package.json file:

{
  "epr": {
    "file1": "lib/file1.js",
    "file2": "lib/file2.js",
    "models": "lib/models"
  }
}

You could have requires like the following:

require('file1')
require('file2')
require('models/model1')
require('models/model2')

no relative paths present, and you never need to update any requires — you just need to update your package.json if you move one of your files.

So check out epr, if you’re using node and are annoyed by relative paths.

NOTE 2019: Revisiting this, I think there are better solutions to this problem now. EPR still works, and if anyone makes a PR or requests a bugfix, I’ll take a look at it, but I’m not using it anymore.