NodeJs : TypeError: require(...) is not a function

Question

I am trying to require a file and afterwards pass it to a var. I am following this tutorial to create a authentication system. After writing the server.js file and trying to compile I got a bson error therefore I changed the line that required the release version of it in mongoose.

Here are my code and error :

server.js

    require('./app/routes')(app, passport);

Error

require('./app/routes')(app, passport);
                   ^

TypeError: require(...) is not a function
           at Object.<anonymous> (d:\Node JS learning\WorkWarV2\server.js:38:24)
           at Module._compile (module.js:434:26)
           at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:452:10)
           at Module.load (module.js:355:32)
           at Function.Module._load (module.js:310:12)
           at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:475:10)
           at startup (node.js:117:18)
           at node.js:951:3

Process finished with exit code 1

I have read that this usually means that requireJS is not getting loaded properly yet I am not aware why or how to fix it.

Edit due to comment:

As asked, here is the result of console.log(require);

Answer 1

I think this means that module.exports in your ./app/routes module is not assigned to be a function so therefore require('./app/routes') does not resolve to a function so therefore, you cannot call it as a function like this require('./app/routes')(app, passport).

Show us ./app/routes if you want us to comment further on that.

It should look something like this;

module.exports = function(app, passport) {
    // code here
}

You are exporting a function that can then be called like require('./app/routes')(app, passport).

---

One other reason a similar error could occur is if you have a circular module dependency where module A is trying to require(B) and module B is trying to require(A). When this happens, it will be detected by the require() sub-system and one of them will come back as null and thus trying to call that as a function will not work. The fix in that case is to remove the circular dependency, usually by breaking common code into a third module that both can separately load though the specifics of fixing a circular dependency are unique for each situation.