The module.exports object is created by the Module system. Sometimes this is not acceptable; many want their module to be an instance of some class. To do this, assign the desired export object to module.exports. Assigning the desired object to exports will simply rebind the local exports variable, which is probably not what is desired.
As mentioned above, exports is an object. So it exposes whatever you assigned to it as a module. For example, if you assign a string literal then it will expose that string literal as a module.
The following example exposes simple string message as a module in Message.js.
Message.js
module.exports = 'Hello world';
Now, import this message module and use it as shown below.
app.js
var msg = require('./Messages.js');
console.log(msg);
Run the above example and see the result, as shown below.
C:\> node app.js
Hello World
Note: You must specify ./ as a path of root folder to import a local module. However, you do not need to specify the path to import Node.js core modules or NPM modules in the require() function.
