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NPM 101

Bullet points that will help you get started with npm 🤘.

  • npm -v prints the version of npm installed on your machine
  • The latest version at the time of writing is 5.0.2
  • Update npm on your osx machine with $ npm i -g npm
  • Always init a new project with npm init
  • npm init will interactively create a package.json for your project.
  • npm init --yes skips the interactive mode and just create a package.json.
  • Lock down dependency versions for publication with npm shrinkwrap
  • Set default config with npm config (see below)
  • Use .npmrc file for setting project config (see below)
  • Use lifecycle scripts like npm start, npm test, npm build, npm deploy
  • Always save when installing module
  • Understand the difference between dependencies vs dev-dependencies (see below)
  • Remove dev-dependencies before deploying to production
  • Lastly, don't commit your node_modules

Set default config with npm config

Set a default author name and email so that you don't need to fill them when you run npm init.

$ npm config set init.author.name=YOUR_NAME
$ npm config set init.author.email=YOUR_EMAIL
$ npm config set init.author.url=YOUR_URL

# View available commands
$ npm config

# View the configs you set
$ npm config list

# View all options
$ npm config edit

Use .npmrc for setting project config

In .npmrc file in your project directory:

save=true
save-exact=true

This will ensure the exact package version is installed and --save command is invoked when npm install is run. Note that in npm version 5.0.2 the dependencies will be saved by default.

Lifecycle scripts

Maximize the use of lifecycle scripts - type less.

In package.json:

"scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js",
    "test": "YOUR TEST SCRIPTS"
}

With this, you can just run npm start instead of typing node index.js. Useful when the commands gets longer.

dependencies vs dev-dependencies

A module installed using -save or -S flags is saved as dependencies in your package.json. Your nodejs app is dependent on it - it will not work without this dependencies installed.

A module installed using -save-dev or -D flags is saved as dev-depedencies in your package.json. Your nodejs app is not dependent on it, but your development environment is dependent on it.

Testing/mocking libraries such as mocha, nock will be in dev-dependencies. Since your app does not depend on them, it should be excluded when you deploy to production.

Remove dev-dependencies before deploying to production

npm prune --production will remove node_modules specified in the dev-dependencies.

Don't commit your node_modules

If you have accidentally committed your node modules, you can remove it like this:

$ echo 'node_modules' >> .gitignore
$ echo 'npm-debug.log' >> .gitignore

$ git rm -r --cached node_modules
$ git commit -am 'ignore node_modules'

Semantic versioning

$ npm version minor|major|patch to bump the version