at-base (pronounced @ base) lets you require local packages relative to your NodeJS applications base path.
npm i -S at-base
☝️ and that's it!
You can use at-base.
No need to require('at-base') anywhere.
What does at-base solve?
In NodeJS applications we sometimes want to import local packages that are in different far away subdirectories.
This can lead to very messy looking require statements.
at-base allows you to import packages using @ as the applications base path.
If you're not convinced—check out the example below...
😓 The traditional (often messy) way:
const balls = require('../../../../baseball/balls') // ❌🤯 The modern at-base way:
const balls = require('@/baseball/balls') // ✅It's rather simple.
After installing at-base as a dependency our postinstall script creates a symlink that points from node_modules/@ to your projects base directory.
Everytime you use a require with @/… NodeJS will look inside the @ package (i.e. our new symlink).
The lookup is routed natively to your projects files.
To NodeJS, both methods of requiring look the same, because the files are literally the same files. We can use both methods in the same project and NodeJS will cache imports correctly.