A NPM Crash Course

The content of this section is a crash course in node and npm. It is not exhaustive, but it will cover all of the necessary tools. The node package manager (npm) installs external node packages (libraries) from the command line. These packages can be a set of utility functions, libraries, or whole frameworks, and they are the dependencies of your application. You can either install these packages to your global node package folder or to your local project folder.

Global node packages are accessible from everywhere in the terminal, and only need to be installed to the global directory once. Install a global package by typing the following into a terminal:

npm install -g <package>

The -g flag tells npm to install the package globally. In contrast, local packages are used in your application:

npm install <package>

The installed package will automatically appear in a folder called node_modules/ and will be listed in the package.json and package-lock.json files next to your other dependencies.

To initialize the node_modules/ folder and the package.json file for a project, use the following npm command. Afterward, you can install new local packages via npm:

npm init -y

The -y flag initializes all the defaults in your package.json. After initializing your npm project, you are ready to install new packages via npm install <package>.

The package.json and package-lock.json files allow you to share your project with other developers without sharing all the node packages from the node_modules/ folder. It will contain references to all node packages used in your project, called dependencies. Other users can copy a project without the actual dependencies using the references in package.json, where the references make it easy to install all packages using npm install. A npm install script will take all the dependencies listed in the package.json file and install them in the node_modules/ folder of your project.

There's one more command to cover for node package installations:

npm install --save-dev <package>

The --save-dev flag indicates that the node package is only used in the development environment, meaning it won't be used in when the application is deployed to a the server or used in production. For instance, when testing a project you may want to install a testing library or framework with the --save-dev flag, because it shouldn't be used for the actual production build.

If you want to uninstall a node package, type the following command and it will disappear from your node_modules/ folder and package.json file:

npm uninstall <package>

Some of you may want to use other package managers to work with node packages in your applications. Yarn is a dependency manager that works similar to npm. It has its own list of commands, but you still have access to the same npm registry. Yarn was created to solve issues npm couldn't, but both tools have evolved to the point where either will suffice today.

Exercises:

• Set up a throw away npm project using the terminal:
  • Create a new folder with mkdir <folder_name>
  • Navigate into the folder with cd <folder_name>
  • Execute npm init -y or npm init
  • Install a local package like React with npm install react
  • Check the package.json file and the node_modules/ folder
  • Attempt to uninstall and reinstall the react node package
• Read about npm.
• Read about yarn package manager.