NodeJS - npm install practice - node.js

Created new folder and did npm install serve in it.
It created package-lock.json and node_modules/ folder.
When I run in the same folder serve it shows error:
command not found: serve
What is the way to install?
I am using: npm#6.5.0

My dev environment is MACOS
I read a great many pages on this topic and nothing worked until I tried the following
./node_modules/.bin/serve -s build
Also if you are using VS CODE you may want to bring up the terminal window outside of VS CODE - this seems to have snared a lot of people.

First of all, you should start your project running
npm init
This will create the package.json file.
Then, you can install the serve package globally.
npm install -g serve
And now you can run serve.

The serve binary was not found because the operating system cannot locate it in the PATH environment variable.
When you do the npm install serve command. The serve module is only installed into the node_modules directory found under the the project folder. Unless you explicitly include the absolute path of this node_module directory as part of your PATH env var, the OS won't know where to find serve.
Like others say, the typical practise would be to install the module using the -g flag. G means global.
When -g is used, npm will put the binary in its node directory somewhere and this this directory would have been included as part of your PATH when you install node, thus making the any new binary discoverable.

If the node.js module has a "command" and you want to run it without installing the module globally(npm install -g serve). You can run it like ./node-modules/.bin/command from the root folder of the project.
Now, what is generally used is npx, so that you can from within a project easily run any of the binaries within its local node_modules or your system's global node_modules/ and any other commands on the $PATH.
For example, here we install webpack as a local dependency. You can image doing this in a folder after running npm init. Then we run webpack without having to worry about referencing the bin file:
$ npm i -D webpack
$ npx webpack

Related

Install global dependency manualy

I'm working on a project which is gonna be deployed on a VM(Windows OS) but I can't download dependencies because all npm ports are blocked and there is no way to open them.
So the only way to solve this is to zip all local dependencies and then copy them to the VM. This is pretty simple however I use two global dependencies: PM2 and pm2-windows-service.
My question is how to copy these two dependencies to the VM and then make them global ?
You can install global dependencies locally and use them from the node_modules path for example:
node node_modules/.bin/pm2 start app.js
instead of
pm2 start app.js
Actually I tend to recommend using the minimal amount of global dependencies ie. only npm
From npm-install:
npm install -g <tarball file>
And:
A package is:
a) a folder containing a program described by a package.json file
b) a gzipped tarball containing (a)
...
And also:
npm install <tarball file>:
Install a package that is sitting on the filesystem. Note: if you just
want to link a dev directory into your npm root, you can do this more
easily by using npm link.
Tarball requirements:
The filename must use .tar, .tar.gz, or .tgz as the extension.
The package contents should reside in a subfolder inside the tarball (usually it is called package/). npm strips one directory
layer when installing the package (an equivalent of tar x
--strip-components=1 is run).
The package must contain a package.json file with name and version properties.
Example:
npm install ./package.tgz
So just copy both (packed) packages and run the above command inside your VM, like npm i -g /pm2.tar.

BrowserSync: command not found after installing locally

I ran the following command for my node app:
$ npm install browser-sync --save-dev
Installation was successful, browser-sync appears in my package.json file as well as my node_modules directory.
However, when I run $ browser-sync --version to check that it's working, I get the following error:
bash: browser-sync: command not found
Why isn't this working?
Note: this question is similar, but I don't want to have to install it globally as in this question.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
This is because you're trying to use a module locally which is normally installed globally. Modules installed globally end up on your PATH environment variable, which is why you can run them from the terminal as you're trying to do:
$ browser-sync --version
If you want to use the browser-sync module from a local install you will have to prepend the full path to the browser-sync binary from within your .bin directory since all locally installed modules are placed within your current working directory node_modules directory. i.e. Node modules go in ./node_modules, executables go in ./node_modules/.bin/. So in order to run the browser-sync binary from a local install do the following:
./node_modules/.bin/browser-sync --version
Hopefully that helps!
If you installed browser-sync using npm --save or npm --save-dev you can run it by writing a script in your package.json. Here's an example of a script I added:
{
...
"scripts": {
"dev-server": "browser-sync start --server 'public' --files 'public'"
},
...
}
You can run the scripts from you project's root directory like so
npm run dev-server
This will run whatever command is set to dev-server in your script. In this case it will run browser-sync for the app/site in a folder called /public and watch for any file changes in the /public folder. I know this question is a bit old but it was unanswered and hopefully I can save someone time in the future.
The other answers still work, but a newer approach has emerged since npm added the npx command: npx <package-name>.
This command allows you to run an arbitrary command from an npm
package (either one installed locally, or fetched remotely), in a
similar context as running it via npm run.
Source: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/commands/npx
In this case, you would run npx browser-sync.

webpack command not working

I am new to Node Js and Webpack. I tried to start a project with module-loaders.
Firstly, I installed nodeJs and NPM and created a new directory called tutorial. I used the command prompt to cd into this directory and then ran the following command npm init and then installed webpack via npm using the command below :
npm install -S webpack
The 1st command installed webpack locally into the project under the 'node-modules' directory and I can run my project by doing this:
nodejs node-modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js
The problem with this is that I have to place my webpack.config.js file inside of this directory which I want to place in my project root.
One solution to this problem was to install webpack globally on my machine which I did using the command below :
npm install -g webpack
This installed Webpack and now I do have a Webpack command. However, this command does not seem to be working or doing anything at all. When I try to run this from my project's root directroy it does not do anything at all (See Screenshot)
Please tell me what I am doing wrong!!
webpack is not only in your node-modules/webpack/bin/ directory, it's also linked in node_modules/.bin.
You have the npm bin command to get the folder where npm will install executables.
You can use the scripts property of your package.json to use webpack from this directory which will be exported.
"scripts": {
"scriptName": "webpack --config etc..."
}
For example:
"scripts": {
"build": "webpack --config webpack.config.js"
}
You can then run it with:
npm run build
Or even with arguments:
npm run build -- <args>
This allow you to have you webpack.config.js in the root folder of your project without having webpack globally installed or having your webpack configuration in the node_modules folder.
You can run npx webpack. The npx command, which ships with Node 8.2/npm 5.2.0 or higher, runs the webpack binary (./node_modules/.bin/webpack) of the webpack package.
Source of info: https://webpack.js.org/guides/getting-started/
I had to reinstall webpack to get it working with my local version of webpack, e.g:
$ npm uninstall webpack
$ npm i -D webpack
npm i webpack -g
installs webpack globally on your system, that makes it available in terminal window.
The problem with my setup was webpack was installed but webpack-cli was missing
npm i -g webpack webpack-cli
If you prefer to install locally then install without -g flag
The quickest way, just to get this working is to use the web pack from another location, this will stop you having to install it globally or if npm run webpack fails.
When you install webpack with npm it goes inside the "node_modules\.bin" folder of your project.
in command prompt (as administrator)
go to the location of the project where your webpack.config.js is located.
in command prompt write the following
"C:\Users\..\ProjectName\node_modules\.bin\webpack" --config webpack.config.vendor.js
Installing webpack with -g option installs webpack in a folder in
C:\Users\<.profileusername.>\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules
same with webpack-cli and webpack-dev-server
Outside the global node_modules a link is created for webpack to be run from commandline
C:\Users\<.profileusername.>\AppData\Roaming\npm
to make this work locally, I did the following
renamed the webpack folder in global node_modules to _old
installed webpack locally within project
edited the command link webpack.cmd and pointed the webpack.js to look into my local node_modules folder within my application
Problem with this approach is you'd have to maintain links for each project you have. Theres no other way since you are using the command line editor to run webpack command when installing with a -g option.
So if you had proj1, proj2 and proj3 all with their local node_modules and local webpack installed( not using -g when installing), then you'd have to create non-generic link names instead of just webpack.
example here would be to create webpack_proj1.cmd, webpack_proj2.cmd and webpack_proj3.cmd
and in each cmd follow point 2 and 3 above
PS: dont forget to update your package.json with these changes or else you'll get errors as it won't find webpack command
Actually, I have got this error a while ago. There are two ways to make this to work, as per my knowledge.
Server wont update the changes made in the index.js because of some webpack bugs. So, restart your server.
Updating your node.js will be helpful to avoid such problems.

Node js Express doesn't recognize npm inside projectfolder

I'm trying to install express through cmd in windows. My problem is installing dependencies after i've successfully installed express and built a skeleton of the framework. It requires to install dependencies. It even tells me the code line
cd Myprojectname && npm install
But it says npm is not recognized as a command.
I don't know if the folder structure is the problem, but here it is:
nodejs
-Myprojectname\
-bin\
-public\
-routes\
-views\
-app.js
-package.json
-node_modules\
-node.exe
-npm
-npm.cmd
-node_etw_provider.bat
-node_etw_provider
-package.json
Thanks for your time!
i think your npm is not defined in evironment variables.
To check try running npm in any other folder or may be in another drive. Your npm was running before because npm executables was present in directory.
Thanks to a fellow programmer i managed to track my own problem to a few words it's npm not a environment variable and so we just need to set it on cmd as so:
C:\node> set path=%PATH%;%CD%
C:\node> setx path "%PATH%"
Thank you https://stackoverflow.com/users/4276650/kulwant-singh

How to put local node package on path?

Newbie question. I have chosen not to install express with -g option. I did not use npm -g which would put it on the path globally. Instead it is installed in my local mac user directory. What I am not clear on is exactly what or how you put a package like express on the path so it can be invoked etc? What exactly needs to be on the path (node_modules?) so these packages are available just like a -g installation? I could have used home-brew I suppose but anyway, I now have all node packages and everything local. Another situation is that I am not able to run any of the nodejs tutorials. Although there might be smarter ways to do this, I wonder if sudo is really such a good way to install a development package ....
Now for example, I want to run the tutorial javascripting which is a nodejs tutorial. How do I do this. If I just type:
Mac1$ javascripting
it finds nothing.
Same for
Mac1$ express
UPDATE: THIS WAS ANSWERED IN THE COMMENTS
The commands exist in a hidden directory after a regular
install npm install express
in my case this the command goes here: /users/MAC1/node_modules/.bin
It is this path that needs to be placed on the $PATH as described in the first comment.
Thanks guys.
npm installes executable to two places. By default running a npm install in a project will install any binaries in ./node_modules/.bin. When you use the -g flag (npm install -g package-name) it will install into a global path. You can find out the global path by running npm bin -g. Add that to your path and globally installed executables will be accessible.
You can also add ./node_modules/.bin to your path to allow easy access to executables added by packages in your project folder. I admit to using this on a trusted local machine. However, this is very dangerous and not a recommended way to expose the executables in the node_modules directory.
Best alternative is to add the executable to the scripts section of the package.json file and then use npm run-script <command> which will auto prepend the ./node_modules/.bin when executing.
package.json
{
"scripts": {
"foo": "foo --arguments"
}
}
Example
$ npm install foo
$ ls ./node_modules/.bin
foo
$ npm run-script foo
# Executes:
./node_modules/.bin/foo --arguments

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