Question

In my Node.js app, I’m passing in variables to functions by using require like so:

console.log(require('../controllers/controller')(variable)); // undefined

However, when I don’t pass in the variable, it logs as a function, like so:

console.log(require('../controllers/controller')); // [Function]

My controllers are defined like this:

var Controller = function (variable) {
  this.variable = variable;
};

Controller.prototype.method = function (someInput, callback) {
  // can access this.variable;
};

module.exports = Controller;

I also get this error:

TypeError: Object function (variable) {
  this.variable = variable;
} has no method 'method'

Any idea as to where I’m going wrong here? I’m stuck at this step and not sure how to debug further.

Answer 1

require('../controllers/controller') is a function. When you use it without new keyword it does not return anything. But when you use new function() it acts like a constuctor of the object. So what you want to do is to use new keyword if you need an object to be returned with its prototype methods.

var Controller = require('../controllers/controller'),
controller = new Controller(variable);