What is this Javascript “require”?

Question

I\'m trying to get Javascript to read/write to a PostgreSQL database. I found this project on github. I was able to get the following sample code to run in node.

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Answer 1

I noticed that whilst the other answers explained what require is and that it is used to load modules in Node they did not give a full reply on how to load node modules when working in the Browser.

It is quite simple to do. Install your module using npm as you describe, and the module itself will be located in a folder usually called node_modules.

Now the simplest way to load it into your app is to reference it from your html with a script tag which points at this directory. i.e if your node_modules directory is in the root of the project at the same level as your index.html you would write this in your index.html:

<script src="node_modules/ng"></script>

That whole script will now be loaded into the page - so you can access its variables and methods directly.

There are other approaches which are more widely used in larger projects, such as a module loader like require.js. Of the two, I have not used Require myself, but I think it is considered by many people the way to go.