Reputation: 1371
I am new to Javascript and am seeing a lot of usage of exports and prototype in the code that I read. What are they mainly used for and how do they work?
//from express
var Server = exports = module.exports = function HTTPSServer(options, middleware){
connect.HTTPSServer.call(this, options, []);
this.init(middleware);
};
Server.prototype.__proto__ = connect.HTTPSServer.prototype;
Upvotes: 54
Views: 67910
Reputation: 68343
This video explains node.js module.exports and here is a resource which describes JavaScript prototype.
Upvotes: 13
Reputation: 9635
Exports is used to make parts of your module available to scripts outside the module. So when someone uses require
like below in another script:
var sys = require("sys");
They can access any functions or properties you put in module.exports
The easiest way to understand prototype in your example is that Server
is a class that inherits all of the methods of HTTPSServer
. prototype
is one way to achieve class inheritance in javascript.
Upvotes: 23