Prevent require(...) from looking up modules in the parent directory

Question

The root directory of my Node project is in a directory that itself is a root of another Node project. So both folders contain package.json and node_modules. The problem is that in the inner project, sometimes I require modules not installed in this project. But Node just silently finds them in the parent project's node_modules which leads to annoying surprises. Can I somehow prevent it from doing so? I'd like not to change the directory structure of the projects unless it's the only solution.

Answer 1

Node tries to resolve current module path name and concatenates node_modules to each of it's parent directory. [Source].

You can override this method at the top of your project module and add some logic to exclude the parent directories from the result path array.

//app.js <-- parent project module, should be added at the top  var Module = require('module').Module; var nodeModulePaths= Module._nodeModulePaths; //backup the original method  Module._nodeModulePaths = function(from) {     var paths = nodeModulePaths.call(this, from); // call the original method      //add your logic here to exclude parent dirs, I did a simple match with current dir     paths = paths.filter(function(path){         return path.match(__dirname)     })     return paths; }; 

inspired by this module