| layout | title | description |
|---|---|---|
guide |
NPM Cheat Sheet |
NPM Cheat Sheet |
For the full table of contents see below, but first here is a quick cheatsheet of several npm commands:
- Installing npm
- Update npm
- Search for npm packages
- View details of a npm package
- Installing a npm package locally
- Installing a npm package into an application
- Understanding Global versus Local installs in npm
- Global Package Installation
- Uninstalling a package locally
- Uninstalling a package globally
- Installing a specific version of a package
- Cloning a module from Github
- Linking any npm package locally
- Linking local npm packages to multiple applications
- Unlinking a npm package from an application
- Unlinking a npm package from your system
- Create a new npm package
- Creating a new user account on npm
- Publishing a npm package
- Unpublishing a npm package
- Managing owners of packages
Installing npm back to top
curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
There are several ways you can update npm.
curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
or
npm install npm -g
npm search hook.io
Protip: Try searching via the browser with http://browsenpm.org
npm view hook.io
Installing a npm package locally back to top
For the purpose of this demo, we will use http-server.
http-server is a package we've written which provides an easy to use wrapper around node's core http.Server class. This module makes for a good example, since it's API provides both a CLI binary and a requirable node.js module.
npm install http-server
This performs a local install of http-server in our current working directory
You may also notice a new node_modules/ folder. You can ignore this for now.
mkdir mynewapp/
cd mynewapp
npm install http-server
touch test.js
run script
node test.js
Notice how we: require('http-server')? What kind of wizardry is this?
http-server is not the name of a native node.js module. It's the name of the package we just installed from npm. node and npm are smart enough to automatically load modules from our local node_modules/ folder.
Understanding Global versus Local installs in npm back to top
By default, npm will install all packages into the local directory you are working in. This is a good thing. It can however, be slightly confusing if you have worked with inferior package management systems in the past.
For example, if we:
mkdir anotherapp/
cd anotherapp/
touch test.js
test.js
var HTTPServer = require('http-server');
and then run the script...
node test.js
we'll get this error:
node.js:134 throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
Error: Cannot find module 'http-server'
at Function._resolveFilename (module.js:326:11)
at Function._load (module.js:271:25)
at require (module.js:355:19)
at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/maraksquires/dev/nodeapps/anotherapp/test.js:1:80)
at Module._compile (module.js:411:26)
at Object..js (module.js:417:10)
at Module.load (module.js:343:31)
at Function._load (module.js:302:12)
at Array.<anonymous> (module.js:430:10)
at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:126:26)
This is logical, we installed http-server locally into "/mynewapp/", not in "/anotherapp/".
There are two direct solutions to fix this:
a) Install the package again, but locally into our new application
cd anotherapp/
npm install http-server
b) Install the package globally
npm install http-server -g
Global Package Installation back to top
If you want to have a package available globally use:
npm install http-server -g
The -g flag will indicate that http-server should be installed globally, and be available for all node scripts to require.
Now, we can require('http-server') in any node script on our system.
In addition, since the http-server package has specified a bin property, it will also install a binary script called http-server globally.
Now you can simply run the command:
http-server
cd mynewapp/
npm uninstall http-server
npm uninstall http-server -g
Installing a specific version of a package back to top
cd mynewapp/
npm install [email protected]
This is important. In some cases, there will be patches, forks, or branches that we will want to use for our module, but have not yet been published to npm. Thankfully, the source code for most npm modules is also available on Github.com
git clone git://github.com/nodeapps/http-server.git
cd http-server/
npm link
Our cloned version of http-server is now linked locally
If you have a local directory containing an npm package, you can link this package locally. This is good for development purposes and for situations when we do not want to publish our package to the public npm repository.
cd http-server/
npm link
Our local version of http-server is "linked" on our local machine
Linking local npm packages to multiple applications back to top
As we've seen before, npm will install packages into the local directory by default. npm link works pretty much the same way.
mkdir newapp/
cd newapp/
npm link http-server
This indicates that we've now linked http-server into our new application newapp. If we had not run npm link http-server we would have gotten a missing module error
cd newapp/
npm unlink http-server
cd http-server/
npm unlink
mkdir mypackage/
cd mypackage/
npm init
npm adduser
Publishing a npm package back to top
cd mypackage/
npm publish
npm unpublish http-server
If you want multiple users to be able to publish to the same package:
npm owner add marak http-server
npm owner rm marak http-server
npm owner ls http-server
For additional information on the package.json format and npm best practices, check out Charlie Robbin's article: http://blog.nodejitsu.com/package-dependencies-done-right