NPM (Node Package Manager) is an essential tool for anyone developing with JavaScript. So in this post I will list some useful commands when using NPM.
Starting a project
We can start a project by running npm init.
We can also do npm init -y if we want a default package.json.
Searching packages
You can fetch NPM packages in two ways. The first way is by directly accessing the NPM website. The second way is using the NPM CLI:
1
npm search <package>
Installing packages
A very important NPM command is install. It allows us to add dependencies to our project.
Some use cases:
1
2
3
4
5
6
npm install # install the packages specified in package.json
npm install package # install a package
npm install package@4.0.1 # install a specific version
npm install package@latest # install the latest version
npm install package -D # install as development dependency
npm install -g package # install package globally
Uninstalling packages
We can uninstall a package using uninstall:
1
npm uninstall package
Updating packages
We can update packages using update:
1
2
npm update // update packages
npm update package // update a specific package
We can still list outdated packages by doing:
1
npm outdated
Other useful NPM commands
Some other commands that can be useful when we are working with NPM:
1
2
3
4
npm login # log in
npm logout # log out
npm whoami # display logged in user
npm publish # publish a package