In node.JS how can I get the path of a module I have loaded via require that is *not* mine (i.e. in some node_module)

Question

I require a module that was installed via npm. I want to access a .js file subordinate to that module (so I can subclass a Constructor method in it). I can\'t (well, don\'t

Answer 1

According to @anatoliy solution, On MacOS X I have found the lookup paths doing

require('module')._resolveLookupPaths('myModule')

so I get the resolved lookup paths

[ 'myModule',
  [ '/Users/admin/.node_modules',
    '/Users/admin/.node_libraries',
    '/usr/local/lib/node' ] ]

whereas the

require('module')._resolveFilename('myModule')

will not resolve the module I was looking for anyways, in fact the crazy thing is that the _load will not resolve the module:

> require('module')._load('myModule')
Error: Cannot find module 'myModule'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:440:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:388:25)
    at repl:1:19
    at sigintHandlersWrap (vm.js:32:31)
    at sigintHandlersWrap (vm.js:96:12)
    at ContextifyScript.Script.runInContext (vm.js:31:12)
    at REPLServer.defaultEval (repl.js:308:29)
    at bound (domain.js:280:14)
    at REPLServer.runBound [as eval] (domain.js:293:12)
    at REPLServer. (repl.js:489:10)

while the require will:

> require('myModule')

but I don't have this module in

myProject/node_modules/
myProject/node_modules/@scope/
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/@scope
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@scope
$HOME/.npm/
$HOME/.npm/@scope/

so where is this module???

First I had to do a $ sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb Then after some coffee I did locate myModule or better locate myModule/someFile.js

et voilà, it comes out that it was in a parent folder of my project i.e. outside my project root folder:

$pwd
/Users/admin/Projects/Node/myProject
$ ls ../../node_modules/myModule/

so you cannot avoid to rm -rf ../../node_modules/myModule/ and a fresh npm install.

I can argue that no one instructed npm to scan my computer in search for modules elsewhere than my project root folder where it was supposed to run or in the default modules search path.