Mixing module.exports with exports

Learn the syntax to export in these two styles in Node.js.

Single Export

module.exports is the export style for a single export in a module. If you want to be able to require, alias, and use a single thing from a module, you would use this style. You would have a-module.js like:

module.exports = () => { /* ... */ }

Which would be usable like:

const aModule = require('./a-module')
aModule()

This style is nice because you can immediately invoke the function by the variable name that you've assigned it to on import.

Multiple Named Exports

For multiple, named exports, the exports style is usable. In a-module.js, you would export like:

exports.aName = () => { /* ... */ }
exports.anotherName = () => { /* ... */ }

And use like:

const aModule = require('./a-module')
aModule.aName()
aModule.anotherName()

You could also destructure your import with:

const { aName, anotherName } = require('./a-module')
aName()
anotherName()

This style of export is nice because you can provide multiple things in a single module, each identified by some name in that collection.

Export Multiple with an Object

To get multiple exports another way, you could group them together in a single object and export that. To export a single thing, we're using module.exports again:

module.exports = { 
  aName: () => { /* ... */ }
  anotherName: () => { /* ... */ }
}

In commonjs, this is used just as the multiple named exports above:

const { aName, anotherName } = require('./a-module')
aName()
anotherName()

Mix of Export Styles

Finally, if you would like to have something exported in a single export style and then have multiple, named exports dangling off it, you might define that module like this:

module.exports = () => {}
module.exports.aName = () => {}

Which would then be usable like this:

const aModule = require('./a-module')
aModule()
aModule.aName()

This style allows you to mix both export styles together in a single module.

Those mixtures all form quite the brew, eh? What other strange mixture of exports do you find useful?