I also agree with this except for returning a function from module.exports.
It is possible but makes mocking much much harder for testing.
think of:
var foo = require('foo');
module.exports = {
awesome: function (a) {
foo(a+1);
}
};
It is kind of awkward to test this module's use of the foo module. It can
be done with rewire [1] but is a little awkward.
If foo was designed where it exported an object literal with functions it
would be much easier to mock:
var foo = require('foo');
module.exports = {
awesome: function (a) {
foo.bar(a+1);
}
};
it("calls foo.bar", function () {
var foo = require('foo');
spyOn(foo, "bar");
});
Just my 2 cents from a testing perspective.
[1] - https://github.com/jhnns/rewire
On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Brian LeRoux <[email protected]> wrote:
> Create modules that are the smallest possible unit of code. Less code is
> fast code. Faster to write. Faster to maintain. Faster to test. On the
> extreme end characters in the Node community such as Substack advocate a
> single function per module definition.
>
> module.exports = function() {
> // my logic here
> }
>
> This is kind of extreme and not always possible but a good practice
> nonetheless. The idea is not new. Its a part of the UNIX philosophy: "do
> one thing well" coined by Doug Mcilroy. [1]
>
> It can help you make code that looks like this [2] into this [3].
>
>
>
> [1] http://homepage.cs.uri.edu/~thenry/resources/unix_art/ch01s06.html
> [2]
>
> https://github.com/apache/cordova-js/blob/c320378b484a172a02d3ee26634bcc584f43b939/Gruntfile.js
> [3] https://github.com/apache/cordova-js/blob/master/Gruntfile.js
>
