Module are an important tool for keeping your code clean.  I'm going to explain a few patterns for using modeule.exports.

Properties or Methods

For exporting properties or methods, you can simply set exports.something to a function or property. This is the simplest form of exporting a module.

For example, say we have a module we call, letters.js

exports.a = function() { 
  console.log('A');
}
exports.b = function() {
  console.log('B');
}
exports.c = 'C';

When we use the module, we directly access the properties and methods that the module exports.

var letters = require('letters');
letters.a();
letters.b();
console.log(letters.c);

The output from this example would be:
a
b
c

Exporting an Instance

You can also export an instance of an object or create a new object that encapsulates your functions. Either way, you cannot simply set exports = {} you will need to use module.exports = {}.

var a = function() {
  console.log('a');
}
var b = function() {
  console.log('b');
}
var c = 'c';

module.exports = {
  a: a,
  b: b,
  c: c
}

Again, when using the module we can directly access the object instance's method.

var letters = require('./letters');
letters.a();
letters.b();
console.log(letters.c);

Exporting a Class

The first two examples allow us to access functions and properties, but what if we want to export a class? We need to follow a similar pattern to the previous example and use module.exports.

var letters = function() {

  this.a = function() {
    console.log('a');
  }
  this.b = function() {
    console.log('b');
  }
  this.c = 'c';
}

module.exports = letters;

To use this module, we will retrieve the module and create a new instance before calling the methods.

var Letters = require('./letters');

var letters = new Letters();
letters.a();
letters.b();
console.log(letters.c);