In Typescript, what is the type of module?

Question

The reason I ask this question is because I saw the following sentence in official document about module.

The core idea of the pattern is that the import id = require("...") statement gives us access to the types exposed by the module.

I am totally confused. Why module has a type? Why require() can give us the type exposed by the module?

Answer 1

At runtime, to another module importing it, a module is a JavaScript object with properties for each export. The set of properties on that object outline the type of the module. And of course TypeScript can know the types of those properties at compile time, just like it can know about other objects.

But from the module's own point of view, it is a function that gets executed to add properties to an exports object passed to it. Generally speaking that exports object becomes the module to its importers.

If that seems strange, then we need to look at the purpose of a module, which is to limit the scope of it's members. In JavaScript, the primary way of limiting the scope of something you are defining, is to define it inside a function.

The exact form of function for modules generated by TypeScript depends on the loader option you choose. With CommonJS modules for example (used by NodeJS) the function for a module gets automatically wrapped around a .js files's conents by the loader. For Node.js that function normally looks like this:

(function (exports, require, module, __filename, __dirname) { 
     <<JavaScriptFileContent>>
\n});

As part of the module loading process, Node.js compiles this anonymous function, then calls it, passing an (almost) empty JavaScript object for exports, the require() function, etc. Typically the code in the middle works by adding properties to the exports object.

That's not quite the whole story, its possible for a module to be something else. If the code in the middle assigns something else to module.exports, that object becomes the runtime module object. This isn't very common.