merging two or more node.js require modules into one namespace

Question

Google Flatbuffers creates in (AMD?) module for each table that one wants. I have them all in one name space called PNTCI.

Right now, I am doing something ugly and non-intuitve to merge the name spaces together by doing successive includes to the PNTCI namespace like this:

const telem = require('../messages/Telemetry_generated').PNTCI
const PNTCI = Object.assign(telem, require('../messages/header_generated').PNTCI)

The again the reason is that the autogenerated require modules have a old fashioned format that looks like this for the Header_generated.js :

// automatically generated by the FlatBuffers compiler, do not modify

/**
 * @const
 * @namespace
 */
var PNTCI = PNTCI || {};

/**
 * Common header for all PNTCI message payloads
 *
 * @constructor
 */

and the end of the file looks like this:

/**
 * @param {flatbuffers.Builder} builder
 * @param {flatbuffers.Offset} offset
 */
PNTCI.Header.finishHeaderBuffer = function(builder, offset) {
  builder.finish(offset);
};

// Exports for Node.js and RequireJS
this.PNTCI = PNTCI;

and for Telemetry_generated.js

// automatically generated by the FlatBuffers compiler, do not modify

/**
 * @const
 * @namespace
 */
var PNTCI = PNTCI || {};

/**
 * @constructor
 */
PNTCI.PosVector = function() {
  /**
   * @type {flatbuffers.ByteBuffer}
   */
  this.bb = null;

and then the end of the file looks like this:

PNTCI.Telemetry.finishTelemetryBuffer = function(builder, offset) {
  builder.finish(offset);
};

// Exports for Node.js and RequireJS
this.PNTCI = PNTCI;

Answer 1

The use of namespaces isn't idiomatic to Node.js because a module itself acts as a namespace, so the problem is specific to these particular modules.

It can be written shorter with object spread syntax:

const PNTCI = {
  ...require('../messages/Telemetry_generated').PNTCI,
  ...require('../messages/header_generated').PNTCI
};

Which is syntactic sugar for:

const PNTCI = Object.assign({},
  require('../messages/Telemetry_generated').PNTCI,
  require('../messages/header_generated').PNTCI
);

If these modules are constantly used together, it may be beneficial to re-export them as single module:

module.exports = {
  ...require('../messages/Telemetry_generated').PNTCI,
  ...require('../messages/header_generated').PNTCI
};

Since there's generally no need for namespaces in Node, merging modules under single PNTCI variable may be unneeded; modules could be imported separately to different variables. This makes the application more modular if only some of these modules are used in some places.