NPM.md

• NPM is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language.
• It is the default package manager for [[Node|Node.js]] and is included as a recommended feature in the Node.js install.
• It can manage packages that are local dependencies of a project, as well as globally-installed JavaScript tools.
• For a local project, all the dependencies of a project are managed through the package.json file, which specifies a range of valid versions using the semantic versioning scheme, allowing developers to auto-update their packages while at the same time avoiding unwanted breaking changes.
• NPM provides a CLI that can be used to download and install software.

NPM scripts

• NPM scripts are a feature of NPM that allows defining custom scripts in a project's package.json file.
  • These scripts can be used to automate various development tasks, such as running tests, building a project, and starting a development server.
• They are easy to use and flexible with some built-in tasks included, such as npm start and npm test.

npx

• npx stands for Node Package Execute.
• It allows us to run packages without having to install them globally.

Publishing a Package

Manual Process

1. Initialize a project with npm init.
2. Write package code.
3. Create a README.md file and add a license.
4. Test package locally.

npm install /path/to/package

5. Login to npm using npm login.
6. If package is written in [[TypeScript]], it needs to be compiled to [[JavaScript]].
7. Publish to npm and verify package is available online.

npm publish --access public

Automated Process with GitHub Actions

• Requires npm token to be generated from profile.

# .github/workflows/publish.yml
name: Publish Package

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
    # OR
    # tags:
    #   - 'v*.*.*' 

jobs:
  publish:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '14'
      - run: npm install
      - run: npm run build
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

Versioning

• Before publishing, npm's built-in versioning command can be used to manually update a package version.
• npm version
  • updates the version in package.json,
  • creates a commit with the message vX.Y.Z, and
  • tags the commit with the version number.

npm version patch  # for a patch update
npm version minor  # for a minor update 
npm version major  # for a major update

• The process can be automated when using tools like semantic-release.
  • Using [[Git#Conventional Commits|conventional commits]] automatically determines the next version number.

---

Further

Videos 🎥