Considering this is the file structure of my working directory
|-- bower.json
|-- lib
| |-- foo1.js
| |-- foo2.js
| `-- foo3.js
|-- node_modules
| |-- body-parser
| |-- bower
| |-- express
| `-- md5
|-- package.json
|-- runserver.sh
|-- server.js
`-- test
How am I supposed to load the third party library modules ( present in ./node_modules ) in my modules that I write in ./lib directory ?
Your requires are relative to the file doing the requiring. If your server.js needs to require something from ./lib/, then you do that:
// in ./server.js
var foo1 = require('./lib/foo1'); // file path: resolve relative to this file.
The exception is "npm installed" dependencies, which live in the node_modules dir, and don't require a file location, just a name:
// in ./server.js
var express = require('express'); // not a file path: find in node_modules
// in ./lib/foo1.js
var express = require('express'); // not a file path: find in node_modules
// in some hypothetical ./lib/extended/secondary/mixin/foo7.js
var express = require('express'); // not a file path: find in node_modules
npm installed module in your ./lib/foo1.js file, or any other file anywhere in your project tree, you still just require it directly by name.
require("body-parser");this will at first check in your local node_modules, if not found it will check in global node_modules directoryvar express = require('express');