Master and Slave style module handing in large Node.js applications. Depends on Underscore for its extends method, otherwise you can simply paste in your own independent extend code.

controllerSample.js

// controllerSample.js

module.exports = function($) {
  return require('../slave.js')($, function($) {
    /* If you need to add mixins or properties to the objects 
    that are given from master.js, you need to declare those 
    inside of this function. Otherwise, they will not work. */
		_.mixin({
		    compactObject: function(to_clean) {
		        $._.map(to_clean, function(value, key, to_clean) {
		            if ( !!!value || (_.isString(value) && value.length === 0)) {
		                delete to_clean[key];
		            }
		        });
		        return to_clean;
		    }
		});
    // if the function is provided you mush return $ (global).
		return $;

	}, main);
}

function main(req, res, next) {
  //...
}

master.js

// master.js

global._ = require('underscore');
global.example = require('./model/example.js')

module.exports = function($,n) {

  z($,n)([
    
    'varName: folder file',
    'counter: maths counter',
    'search: utils fulltext',
    'etc: etc etc'
    
	]);
	
}

function z($,n) {
	return function(m) {
		m.forEach(function(a) {
			var b = a.split(': ');
			var c = b[1].split(' ');
			var f = $[b[0]] = require('./'+c.join('/')+'.js');
			if(typeof f == 'function') {
				if(f.length == 1) {
					$[b[0]] = f(global);
				}
			}
		})
		n();
	}
}

slave.js

// slave.js

module.exports = function($, init, next) {
  if(typeof next != 'function') {
		global = $._.extend(global,$);
		return init;
	} else {
		global = $._.extend(global,init($));
		return next;
	}

}