Awesome npm

Awesome npm resources and tips

npm is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language and comes bundled in the Node.js runtime.

Please read the contribution guidelines before contributing.

Contents

• Articles
• Tools
• Packages
• Clients
• Tips
• FAQ
• Community
• Documentation
• Support
• Related

Articles

• Small focused modules
• Unix philosophy and Node.js - Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
• Writing small modules
• Semver: A Primer (Must read!)
• Semver: Tilde and Caret
• Offline installation of npm packages
• Task automation with npm run
• How to use npm as a build tool
• Install npm packages globally without sudo on macOS and Linux
• Optimizing the footprint of an npm package
• The Art of Node - An introduction to Node.js and client-side development with npm.
• Why npm scripts? - An introduction to npm scripts with common packages and scripts, as well as a boilerplate project.

Tools

Web

• npms - Superb package search with deep analysis of package quality using a myriad of metrics.
  • npm-introspect - A npms-based utility for visually exploring the quality of package dependencies.
• npmsearch - Fast package search with ranking based on metrics like stars, dependents, release frequency, etc.
• node-modules - Personalized package search based on your GitHub social graph.
• NodeICO - Package badges.
• Libraries.io - Package discovery.
• npm-stat - Statistics charts for packages.
• npmgraph - Visualization of dependencies.
• npm trends - Compare package download counts over time.
• npm-compare - Easily search and compare packages.
• npm-top - npm users by downloads.
• npm semver calculator - Visually explore what versions of a package a semver range matches.
• npm-stats - Displays metrics about packages.
• ghub.io - Redirects to the GitHub repo of an npm package.
• npm addict - Your daily injection of npm packages.
• moiva - Discover and compare packages.

Browser extensions

• Octo-Linker - Chrome extension to navigate across npm packages on GitHub with ease.
• npm-hub - Chrome extension to explore npm dependencies on GitHub repos.
• github-npm-stats - View npm download stats on GitHub.
• npm-search-update - Chrome extension to quickly search for dependencies and monitor changes from the npm registry.

CLI

• zsh-better-npm-completion - Better ZSH completion for npm.
• npkill - Easily find and remove old and heavy node_modules folders.

Packages

Publishing

• np - A better

  npm publish

  .
• publish-please - Publish packages safely and gracefully.
• npm-release - Making releasing to npm so easy a kitten could probably do it™.
• pkgfiles - List all files which would be published in a package.
• release-it - Automate releases for Git repositories and/or npm packages. Changelog generation, GitHub/GitLab releases, etc.
• semantic-release - Fully automated package publishing.

Registry

• npm-name - Check whether a package name is available on npm.
• package-json - Get the package.json of a package from the npm registry.
• latest-version - Get the latest version of an npm package.
• npm-keyword - Get a list of npm packages with a certain keyword.
• npm-user - Get user info of an npm user.
• npm-email - Get the email of an npm user.
• npm-user-packages - Get packages by an npm user.
• dpn - Get the dependents of a user's npm packages.
• npm-stats - Get data from an npm registry.
• npm-cli-login - Log in to npm.
• nrm - Registry manager.
• npm-register - Easy to set up and maintain npm registry and proxy.
• verdaccio - Lightweight private npm proxy registry.
• cloudsmith - A fully managed package management SaaS with support for public and private npm registries (and many others).

Other

• npm-home - Open the npm page of a package.
• gh-home - Open the GitHub page of a package.
• david - Check if your package dependencies are out of date.
• npm-check - Check for outdated, incorrect, and unused dependencies, as well as interactive update.
• npm-upgrade - Update outdated npm dependencies interactively.
• npm-shrinkwrap - A consistent shrinkwrap tool.
• npm-windows-upgrade - Upgrade npm on Windows.
• generator-nm - Scaffold out an npm package.
• pkg-up - Find the closest package.json file.
• read-pkg-up - Read the closest package.json file.
• normalize-package-data - Normalize package metadata.
• pkg-conf - Get namespaced config from the closest package.json.
• npm-run-path - Run locally installed binaries in the terminal by name like with global ones.
• local-npm - Use npm offline.
• npe - CLI for inspecting and editing properties in package.json.
• engine-deps - Manage Node.js version specific dependencies with ease.
• enpeem-search - Search packages by scraping the npm web search.
• npm-issues - Search known issues of all your packages at once.
• john - Make npm3's flat dependencies easier to find and sort.
• ntl - Interactive CLI menu to list & run npm tasks.
• decheck - Explore dependencies of npm packages in the command-line.
• shrinkpack - Lock down your dependencies and install offline.
• redrun - Expand scripts from package.json to improve execution speed.
• package-size - Get the bundle size of an npm package.
• synp - Convert yarn.lock to package-lock.json and vice versa.
• npm-run-all - CLI tool to run multiple npm-scripts in parallel or serial.
• onchange - Watch files and folders and run a command when something changed.
• cli-error-notifier - Sends native desktop notifications when npm scripts fail.
• luna - App to manage npm dependencies.
• emma-cli - Interactive CLI package search utility.
• lockfile-lint - Lint lockfiles for improved security and trust policies to mitigate malicious package injection and insecure lockfile resources.

Clients

• yarn - Fast, reliable, and secure dependency management.
• npm - The official client.
• pnpm - Fast, disk space efficient package manager.

Tips

Update to the latest npm version

$ npm install --global npm

Windows users, read more.

Command aliases

• npm i

  →

  npm install

• npm i -D

  →

  npm install --save-dev

• npm t

  →

  npm test

• npm it

  →

  npm install && npm test

• npm r

  →

  npm uninstall

• npm un

  →

  npm uninstall

• npm up

  →

  npm update

Shell aliases

Speed up your common npm tasks.

In your

.zshrc

.bashrc

alias ni='npm install'
alias nid='npm install --save-dev'
alias nig='npm install --global'
alias nt='npm test'
alias nit='npm install && npm test'
alias nk='npm link'
alias nr='npm run'
alias ns='npm start'
alias nf='npm cache clean && rm -rf node_modules && npm install'
alias nlg='npm list --global --depth=0'

Don't add to package.json when installing

By default npm adds packages you install to the

dependencies

--no-save

devDependencies

--save-dev

-D

$ npm install --save-dev ava

Run scripts

You can easily run scripts using npm by adding them to the

"scripts"

npm run 

npm run

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "cat": "cat-names"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "cat-names": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

$ npm run cat
Max

All package.json properties are exposed as environment variables:

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "name": "echo $npm_package_name"
    }
}

$ npm run name
awesome-package

Passing options to commands

You can pass options to the command you are using in your npm script by adding

-- --flag

--

npm run

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "xo": "xo",
        "xo:fix": "npm run xo -- --fix",
    }
}

Adding the

-- --fix

xo --fix

Silent option

npm run

--silent

Imagine you have a setup for linting your JavaScript files like the following:

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "xo": "xo",
        "xo:fix": "npm run xo --silent -- --fix",
    }
}

Using the

--silent

Lifecycle scripts

npm comes with predefined lifecyle scripts which are excuted under specific conditions if they are defined in your package.json.

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "prepublishOnly": "nsp check"
    },
    "devDependencies": {
        "nsp": "^3.0.0"
    }
}

This will be executed automatically before your npm package is published to the registry via

npm publish

Note: *prepublishOnly** is available since npm v4.0.0. See npm docs.*

npm start

and

npm test

npm start

npm test

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "node server.js",
        "test": "ava"
    },
    "devDependencies": {
        "ava": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

Therefore they can be executed simply with:

$ npm test
$ npm start

pre

and

post

scripts

These are special lifecycle scripts which can be used to run scripts automatically in sequence.

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "scripts": {
        "pretest": "eslint .",
        "test": "ava"
    },
    "devDependencies": {
        "eslint": "^4.19.0",
        "ava": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

$ npm test

This will lint your files before running your tests. The tests will not run if linting fails. Or more generally spoken: the following script won’t be executed if one of the scripts running in sequence exits with an exit code other than 0.

Note:

pre

post

npm run foo

prefoo

postfoo

Run script with

npx

npm

npx

node_modules/.bin

{
    "name": "awesome-package",
    "dependencies": {
        "cat-names": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

If the binary is already installed, it will be executed from

node_modules/.bin

$ npx cat-names
Max

But if the binary is missing, it will be installed first.

$ npx dog-names
npx: installed 46 in 3.136s
Bentley

Run commands with different Node.js versions

With

npx

node-bin

nvm

nave

n

$ npx [email protected] -- node --version
v6.11.0

Link local packages

Sometimes it can be useful to have a local version of a package as a dependency. You can use

npm link

npm link

npm link 

$ cd rainbow
$ npm link
$ cd ../unicorn
$ npm link rainbow

You can now use

rainbow

unicorn

Install a package from GitHub

npm supports using a shorthand for installing a package directly from a GitHub repo:

$ npm install sindresorhus/chalk

Let's target a specific commit as the main branch is a moving target:

$ npm install 'sindresorhus/chalk#51b8f32'

Specify either a commit SHA, branch, tag, or nothing.

You can also install Git dependencies with semver: (Requires npm v5 or newer)

$ npm install 'sindresorhus/chalk#semver:^2.0.0'

Install a specific version of a package

$ npm install [email protected]

List top-level installed packages and their version

$ npm ls --depth=0

Command help

Get help docs for a command:

$ npm help 

Example:

$ npm help install

Standalone version of a package

Quickly get a standalone version of a package that is browserified and usable in the browser.

https://wzrd.in/standalone/[@]

Examples:

• https://wzrd.in/standalone/object-assign
• https://wzrd.in/standalone/[email protected]

Great for prototyping, but download the file or use Browserify yourself for production.

FAQ

• Check in node_modules vs. shrinkwrap
• What is the difference between Bower and npm?
• What does

  ^

  mean in package.json versioning?
• Find the version of an installed npm package
• What's the difference between dependencies, devDependencies, and peerDependencies in package.json?

Community

• #npm

  on Freenode
• Stack Overflow
• Reddit
• Twitter
• Blog

Documentation

• Official
• Troubleshooting
• Semantic versioning
• Fixing npm permissions
• package.json
• npm run script
• Stats API

Support

• npm.community
• Twitter
• Contact form

Related

• awesome-nodejs