HyperRequire

HyperRequire is an interactive development tool designed to speed up your workflow. It's like a souped-up React Hot Loader for the backend. 🔥 Just save a file and HyperRequire will auto-magically ✨ patch the new code into your running program.

Unlike typical HMR, HyperRequire auto-magically updates all of your exported functions, class prototypes and objects in-place.

HyperRequire watches all your imported modules and can patch almost any type at runtime, including:

• Functions
• Class prototypes and constructors
• Objects and arrays
• Any any property on module.exports

Note: HyperRequire doesn't play well with ESM/MJS yet.

Install it

yarn add -D hyper-require # or npm install -D hyper-require

Use it

Start a REPL

node -r hyper-require/register
# or
babel-node -r hyper-require/register
# or
ts-node -r hyper-require/register
# or even
ts-node -r hyper-require/register -r tsconfig-paths/register

Use it in Node:

// 1. watch and auto-patch all modules
require("hyper-require/register");

// ... or 2. same as #1, but you control start/stop
const hyperRequireWatch = require("hyper-require/watch");
const watcher = hyperRequireWatch();
watcher.dispose();

// ... or  3. control module patching
const hyperRequire = require("hyper-require");
let mod = require("./a-module");
hyperRequire("./a-module");

API

HyperRequire (hyper-require)

Provides a function to reload and patch a specified module

const hyperRequire = require("hyper-require");
hyperRequire("./a-module");

Register (hyper-require/register)

Requiring this file will immediately begin watching files for changes.

Watch (hyper-require/watch)

Watch accepts an object specifying path and ignore path globs anymatch.

const watcher = require("hyper-require/watch")({
  path: "./dir",
  ignore: "./other",
});

If path is unspecified, HyperRequire will fall back to HYPER_REQUIRE_WATCH_PATH, then the app root path.

If path is unspecified, HyperRequire will fall back to HYPER_REQUIRE_IGNORE_PATH, then the glob **/node_modules**.

Global callback (module.onHyperRequire)

HyperRequire checks for a onHyperRequire function on every module and will call it evey time a module is reloaded. module.onHyperRequire will be called with two arguments: the id of the reloaded module, and the value of it's module.exports.

Limitations & gotchas

Side-effects during module loading

Please be mindful that HyperRequire will re-evaluate the module's underlying file, which could lead to contention over sockets from web servers or database connections.

To gracefully wind down these types of resources, HyperRequire will call module.detach on the running module before it's replacement is loaded, and module.dispose on the previous module after a new one is successfully loaded.

let i = 0;

const timer = setInterval(() => console.log(i++), 1000);

module.detach = () => clearInterval(timer);

module.dispose = () => {}

Destructuring primitives

If you're exporting and modifying primitives (numbers, strings, booleans) and want those changes to propagate, avoid destructuring the returned object from require.

// # num.js
module.exports = { num: 1 };

// # main.js

// ## ex 1 - with destructuring assignment
const { num } = require("./mod");
// programmer updates num.js:num to 2
hyperRequire("./mod");
console.log(num); // it's still 1 :(

// ## ex 2 - with reference to module.exports
const mod = require("./mod");
// programmer updates num.js:num to 2
hyperRequire("./mod");
console.log(num); // it's 2!

// ## ex 3 - with controlled updates
let { num } = require("./mod");
// programmer updates num.js:num to 2
const { num: newNum } = hyperRequire("./mod"); // `hyperRequire` returns the fresh module.exports
num = newNum;
console.log(num); // it's 2!

Function as module.exports 🏗

This does not work yet. WIP.

module.exports = function () {
  /*...*/
};

Persisted values between reloads

WIP. Right now, all values in module.exports are overwritten on reload. In the future, there will be an API (e.g. const myVal = module.persisted.myVal;) to enable retaining values between reloads.

Bubbling module updates (like module.hot.accept)

This is WIP.