require

require() is the function to load a module. See the manuel to know more about modules.

You should indicate the name of a module (file name without the extension). The module loader tries to load the module from the directory of the main script, and from directories indicated into the paths properties.

For the module name, it can be a relative path to the current module or the full path of the module file.

The require() function has some properties:

require.paths

This is an array containing path of directories where to find modules.

require.paths.push('/home/laurent/my-modules');
require.paths.push(fs.workingDirectory+'/modules');
require.paths.push('../other-modules/');

Since 0.8.3: you can indicate a relative path as indicated in the CommonJS specification. The real path is resolved only during the call of require(), and against the path of the module that do that call.

require.globals

require.globals is an object on which you can set properties that will become global variables in each loaded modules.

Example:

require.globals
        .thisIsMyGlobalFunction = function() {
                                    return 'hello'
                                }

You can then call this function in an other module, like any native function

var result = thisIsMyGlobalFunction();

require.extensions

SlimerJS supports natively Javascript files, Coffee-Script files and JSON files, with the require function.

If you want to support scripts written in an other language (that can be compiled into javascript), you can then declare the extension of this type of script and the function that will compile the file.

var fs = require('fs');
require.extensions['.myext'] = function (module, filename) {
      // here load the file and compile it
      var fileContent = fs.read(filename);
      var jscontent = ....

      // then give the javascript content to module._compile
      module._compile(jscontent, filename);
}

With this example, you can use require to load modules from files *.myext.