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
Related
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
I'm building a cli node module. I would like people to be able to npm install it and use it right away with a command like npm my-project --arg=foo. It's meant for local project CLI use as a dev tool, not global installation.
It seems like the standard is to use bin in the package.json, but I don't understand some things about it:
When should I use bin and when should I use scripts?
How to I run the command in the including project? npm my-project doesn't do it.
Here is what I am doing now in package.json:
{
"name": "my-project",
"bin": "./cli.js"
}
And I can run it locally:
node cli.js --arg=foo
But when I npm-install my-project somewhere else, I don't know how to run the script it puts in bin (npm run my-project doesn't work), or if I'm using this correctly.
Let's start by explaining the difference between bin and scripts: the former you use if you want to provide a command line tool, the latter you use if you want to provide an additional command to npm (with some caveats though, see below).
In your situation, I think you want to use bin. However, instead of the user using npm my-project --arg=foo, they will use my-project --arg=foo, provided that your script is called my-project. To make that happen, your package.json will contain something like this:
"bin" : "./bin/my-project"
During installation, this will copy ./bin/my-project to a "bin" directory (usually /usr/local/bin on Unix-like OS'es). During development, you can call it as node bin/my-project, or even just ./bin/my-project, provided that it has correct permissions and "shebang".
EDIT: so I forgot that npm will use the package name, and not the name of the file in ./bin, as the executable name (if bin is a string). If your package is called my-project, and you install the package (you need to use the -g flag before npm will install the executable), it will create an executable called my-project, regardless of where the bin property points to.
In other words:
package.json:
"name" : "my-project"
"bin" : "./cli.js"
npm install -g:
copies ./cli.js to /usr/local/bin/my-project and sets executable permissions
END EDIT
FWIW, storing CLI tools in ./bin is convention, but not mandatory.
The scripts directive is useful for more internal purposes. For instance, you can use it to run a test suite, or linters, or pre/post install scripts.
Lastly, there are various modules available to help with command line parsing. I like docopt, but other often-used modules are commander or nomnom. You already mentioned yargs.
For example I tried installing npm serve globally
$ npm install -g serve
but after seemingly successfully installing it, I was unable to run the serve executable. Seems like the command just could not be found. Turns out the exe serve file was located in:
usr/local/share/npm/bin
rather than in what I thought should be (where all the other executable files are):
usr/local/bin
Any idea why I can't seem to get this to work?
Similar to this answer, create/edit ~/.npmrc to include:
prefix = /usr/local/bin
I have a small Node module that includes a command line script in the bin directory.
"bin": {
"generate": "./bin/generate.js"
}
The generate.js script is properly executable.
This all works fine if I run npm install -g. But I'd prefer not to globally install and only have the command generate work from inside the module folder. If I run npm install from the module folder, it does correctly install all of the dependencies in a node_modules subdirectory. But then generate from the command like gives me "No such file or directory."
Thx.
I never install node modules using -g. My solution for your problem is to add this to my $PATH
# add this to ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.profile, etc
export PATH="./node_modules/.bin:$PATH"
Now, so long as your in the root of your module, you can access any binaries that have been installed as modules.
As an example, less is commonly installed with
npm install -g less
However, if you have your PATH modified as described above, you could something like this
cd my_node_module
npm install --save less
lessc less/style.less css/style.css
Without the PATH modification, you would've seen
command not found: lessc
If you don't feel like altering your PATH, you can access the binary directly
cd my_node_module
npm install --save lessc
./node_modules/.bin/lessc a.less a.css
Yay, no more npm install -g ...
This question already has answers here:
Install dependencies globally and locally using package.json
(7 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
I have a few "global" dependencies (jshint, csslint, buster, etc..) that I'd like to have automatically installed and executable via the command line when my package is installed via npm install. Is this possible?
Currently, I'm doing the following manually:
npm install -g <package_name>
from within my project: npm link <package_name>
Update:
Just came across this feature request for npm. It seems like the scripts config within package.json is the way to go?
Update Again:
Or, after reading the npm docs, maybe I'm supposed to use a .gyp file? I'm confused.
It's not possible to specify dependencies as "global" from a package.json. And, this is by design as Isaac states in that feature request you referenced:
Yeah, we're never going to do this.
But, "binaries" can still be used when a package is installed locally. They'll be in .../node_modules/.bin/. And, you should be able to queue them up with a preinstall script.
Though, if the series of commands is rather lengthy (as "jshint, csslint, buster, etc.." would suggest), you may want to look into using a build tool such as grunt to perform the various tasks:
{
// ...,
"scripts": {
"preinstall": "grunt"
}
}
I really like the pattern where you install local dependencies, then use a bash script that sets your PATH to ./node_modules/.bin.
File: env.sh
# Add your local node_modules bin to the path for this command
export PATH="./node_modules/.bin:$PATH"
# execute the rest of the command
exec "$#"
Then, you can use this script before any bash command. If you pair that with a Makefile or npm script:
File: Makefile
lint :
./env.sh csslint my_styles
File: package.json
"scripts": {
"lint": "./env.sh csslint my_styles"
}
This tasks in these files look like they reference csslint in some global location, but they actually use the version in your node_modules bin.
The really awesome benefit of this is that these dependencies can be versioned easily, just like your other node modules. If you stick with a global install solution, you could be clobbering some specific version on the user's system that is required for one of their other projects.
You should try this: https://github.com/lastboy/package-script
I've been using it to install global npm packages straight from the package.json. It works well for clients who aren't technically literate.
It even checks if the packages are already installed, if not install them!