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• 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
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• 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.

• npms - Superb package search with deep analysis of package quality using amyriad of metrics.
• NodeICO - Package badges.
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• npm trends - Compare package download counts over time.
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• npm semver calculator - Visually explore what versions of a package a semver range matches.
• ghub.io - Redirects to the GitHub repo of an npm package.
• moiva - Discover and compare packages.

• Octo-Linker - Chrome extension to navigate across npm packages on GitHub with ease.
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• 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.

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

• np - A betternpm 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.

• 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).

• 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.
• package-up - Find the closest package.json file.
• read-package-up - Read the closest package.json file.
• normalize-package-data - Normalize package metadata.
• package-config - 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 npmoffline.
• 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.

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

$ npm install --global npm

Windows users, read more.

• 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

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'

By default npm adds packages you install to thedependencies field in package.json (since v5). You can prevent this by specifying the--no-save flag. You can add a package todevDependencies with--save-dev/-D:

$ npm install --save-dev ava

You can easilyrun scripts using npm by adding them to the"scripts" field in package.json and run them withnpm run <script-name>. Runnpm run to see available scripts. Binaries of locally install packages are made available in thePATH, so you can run them by name.

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

$ npm run catMax

All package.json properties areexposed as environment variables:

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

$ npm run nameawesome-package

You can pass options to the command you are using in your npm script by adding-- --flag like in the example below. The--marks the end of options parsing, sonpm run will just ignore it and pass it to the command.

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

Adding the-- --fix option is like executingxo --fix.

npm run has a--silent option which is especially useful when combining npm scripts.

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 option reduces the output in the terminal. Seethis comparison.

npm comes with predefinedlifecyle 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 vianpm publish to check for known vulnerabilties in your dependencies.

Note:prepublishOnly is available since npm v4.0.0. Seenpm docs.

npm start andnpm test are also lifecycle scripts but are not executed automatically.

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

Therefore they can be executed simply with:

$npmtest$npm start

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"}}

$npmtest

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 andpost scripts can also be used for your custom npm scripts. Sonpm run foo will also runprefoo andpostfoo if defined.

npmcomes bundled withnpx (Since v5.2.0) — a tool to execute package binaries. Each command is executed either from the localnode_modules/.bin directory, or from a central cache, installing any packages needed in order for<command> to run.

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

If the binary is already installed, it will be executed fromnode_modules/.bin.

$ npx cat-namesMax

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

$ npx dog-namesnpx: installed 46 in 3.136sBentley

Withnpx (Comes bundled with npm v5.2.0 or newer) and thenode-bin package, you can easily try out code in different Node.js versions without having to use a version manager likenvm,nave, orn.

$ npx --package=node-bin@6.11.0 -- node --versionv6.11.0

Sometimes it can be useful to have a local version of a package as a dependency. You can usenpm link to link one local package into another. Runnpm link in the package you want to use. This creates a global reference. Then go into your original package and runnpm link <package-name> to link in the other package.

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

You can now userainbow as a dependency in theunicorn package.

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'

$ npm install chalk@1.0.0

$ npm ls --depth=0

Get help docs for a command:

$ npm help <command>

Example:

$ npm help install

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

https://wzrd.in/standalone/<package-name>[@<version>]

Examples:

• https://wzrd.in/standalone/object-assign
• https://wzrd.in/standalone/object-assign@4.0.0

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

• 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?

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