Since jsreport@0.13 it is quite easy to require or reach local scripts or files. This was actually possible all the time however it was a bit difficult to correctly combine the path to the local resource. This is now fixed.
Lets assume you have somewhere in you application file helperA.js you would like to use in the template's helper...
At the very beginning you need to first opt in and allow the module require in the settings tasks.allowedModules. The expected value is an array of unblocked modules or simply "*" if you just want to allow every require call.
{
"tasks": {
"allowedModules": "*"
}
}
Then create helperA.js in the root of your application.
module.exports = function() {
return 'Hello world';
}
And now you should be able to require this module inside your helper functions.
function helperA() {
require('helperA.js')()
}
How the require finds your script? The standard nodejs require searches in several folders for the required script. jsreport additionally extends this with path to the application root and also to the directory from which jsreport was initialized and started. This way it assembles the full absolute path to your script and requires it. This is all provided in the single require call.
What if you don't want to call require but rather read the file from the disk using fs module? To fulfill this jsreport extends the global scope with following variables:
__rootDirectory - two directories up from jsreport
__appDirectory - directory of the script which is used when starting node
__parentModuleDirectory - directory of script which was initializing jsreport-core
You can then use this variables to combine the full path to your local resources inside helpers or also custom scripts...
var path = require('path');
var fs = require('fs');
var data = fs.readFileSync(path.join(__appDirectory, 'resources/myResource.json'));