What is npm node js

About npm. Getting started Setting up your npm user account. Managing your npm user account. Paying for your npm user account. Packages and modules. You can either move the package. If you want to get on to building your project, and don't want to spend the albeit brief time answering the prompts that come from npm init , you can use the --yes flag on the npm init command to automatically populate all options with the default npm init values.

Note: You can configure what these default values are with the npm configuration - that's a more advanced topic, and outside the scope of this beginner's guide to npm.

That said, if you're interested in setting that up, you can learn how to set these defaults in the eleventh tip of our npm tricks article. Installing modules from npm is one of the most basic things you should learn to do when getting started with npm.

As you dive deeper, you'll begin to learn some variations on installing modules, but here's the very core of what you need to know to install a standalone module into the current directory:.

For example, if you want to install Express the most used and most well known Node. In addition to triggering an install of a single module, you can actually trigger the installation of all modules that are listed as dependencies and devDependencies in the package.

To do so, you'll simply need to run the command itself:. Once you run this, npm will begin the installation process of all of the current project's dependencies. As an aside, one thing to note is that there's an alias for npm install that you may see in the wild when working with modules from the ecosystem. The alias is npm i , where i takes the place of install. This seemingly minor alias is a small gotcha for beginners - including myself, several times when I was learning - to the Node.

As with npm init , the npm install command has a flag or two that you'll find useful in your workflow - it'll save you time and effort with regard to your project's package.

When you're running npm install to install a module, you can add the optional flag --save to the command. This flag will add the module as a dependency of your project to the project's package. There's a flag that is nearly an exact duplicate, in terms of functionality, of the --save flag when installing a module: --save-dev.

There are a few a key differences between the two - instead of saving the module being installed and added to package. The semantic difference here is that dependencies are for use in production - whatever that would entail for your project.

On the other hand, devDependencies are a collection of the dependencies that are used in development of your application - the modules that you use to build it, but don't need to use when it's running. Sending a package to our npmjs. The tricky part, which is not specific to npm package authors, is determining the version of the package. That's all we need to know to start wielding npm effectively and command our lovely army of wombats!

If you read this far, tweet to the author to show them you care. Tweet a thanks. Learn to code for free. Get started. Forum Donate. Stanley Nguyen. This article should serve as an all-in-one essential guide for Node. What is NPM? NPM consists of two main parts: a CLI command-line interface tool for publishing and downloading packages, and an online repository that hosts JavaScript packages For a more visual explanation, we can think of the repository npmjs.

So dependencies are delivered to JavaScript developers like this: and the process of publishing a package for your JS mates would be something like this: Let's look at how this army of wombats assist developers who want to use JavaScript packages in their projects. Often times, for application development, this field is often neglected as there's no apparent need for versioning opensource libraies.

Let's open package. Update package. Creating a module requires package. Let's generate package. You will need to provide all the required information about your module.