Question

I was trying to create an IRC bot written in Javascript + NodeJS. This bot should be able to load plugins while running and should be able to reload the same plugin after changes etc.

What works?

Loading files at runtime + executing its code.

What’s wrong?

After loading the same plugin again if still executes my code, but now it happens twice or nth times I load the plugins.

Current code:

bot.match(/\.load/i, function(msg) {
    require('./plugins/plug.js')(this);
});

module.exports  = function(bot) {
    bot.match(/\.ping/i, function(msg) {
    msg.reply('pong');
});

So, is there any way to fix my issues and make this work?

P.s. I’m using IRC-JS as a base for this bot.

updated, fixed:

Even changes to that file are ignored, so it must be something like a
cache.

Fixed by clearing the require.cache

Answer 1

To answer my own question. While loading plugins, I add every object to a global array. This can be easily accessed and deleted afterwards.

function clearplugins() {
    require("fs").readdirSync("./plugins/active").forEach(function(file) {
        delete require.cache[require.resolve("./plugins/active/" + file)];
    });

    plugins.forEach(function(obj) {
        obj();
    });
}

function loadplugins() {
    require("fs").readdirSync("./plugins/active").forEach(function(file) {

        if(file.slice(-2) == 'js') {
            plugins.push(require("./plugins/active/" + file)(bot));
            console.log(file+' loaded');
        }
    });
}