CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jsmodulenpm
chovy
chovy

Reputation: 75824

Best way to setup configuration for an npm module?

I am looking for a good way to setup configuration for an npm module I'm working on.

The module has two functions notify.sms.send() and notify.email.send(). I'm also providing a third abstract function that calls both (or whichever are enabled) called notify.send().

I have an object called notify.cfg which is just a simple object hash {}.

I'm wondering if this is a good way to do this. Because its a module, I can't hardcode anything and configuration should be passed in when the module is required....like this:

//setup smtp server
var smtp = {
    host: xxx,
    user: user,
    pass: pass,
    port: port
};

//setup email headers
var email = {
    to: '[email protected]',
    from: '[email protected]'
};

var notify = require('app-notify');

//set your configuration
notify.cfg.email = email;
notify.cfg.smtp = smtp;

The signature of notify.cfg is this:

var cfg = {};
exports.cfg = cfg;

I'm running into some issues while testing where when I overwrite the notify.cfg = myConfig in my beforeEach tests it seems to still retain older data from previous tests that have run. I don't know if its this config setup for my module or the way I'm writing my tests.

For anyone interested the code is here: https://github.com/chovy/app-notify

Upvotes: 0

Views: 200

Answers (1)

vkurchatkin
vkurchatkin

Reputation: 13570

You are effectively making configuration singleton thus package becomes less usable. A typical API looks like:

var Notify = require('app-notify');
var notify = new Notify({
  email : ...
  smtp : ...
});

If a user wants a singleton notify object they can just module.exports = new Notify({...}) and require it elsewhere.

Your index.js file would look like this:

function Notify(config) {
  if (!(this instanceof Notify))
    return new Notify(config);

  ....
}

module.exports = Notify;

instanceof check is used to make it possible to omit new keyword.

Upvotes: 1

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