Installing npm back to top

 curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Update npm

There are several ways you can update npm.

 curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

or

 npm install npm -g 

Search for npm packages

 npm search hook.io 

Protip: Try searching via the browser with

View details of a npm package

 npm view hook.io 

Installing a npm package locally back to top

For the purpose of this demo, we will use http-server.

http-server is a package we've written which provides an easy to use wrapper around node's core http.Server class. This module makes for a good example, since it's API provides both a CLI binary and a requirable node.js module.

 npm install http-server 

This performs a local install of http-server in our current working directory

You may also notice a new node_modules/ folder. You can ignore this for now.

Installing a npm package into an application

 mkdir mynewapp/
 cd mynewapp
 npm install http-server
 touch test.js

run script

 node test.js 

Notice how we: require('http-server')? What kind of wizardry is this?

http-server is not the name of a native node.js module. It's the name of the package we just installed from npm. node and npm are smart enough to automatically load modules from our local node_modules/ folder.

Understanding Global versus Local installs in npm back to top

By default, npm will install all packages into the local directory you are working in. This is a good thing. It can however, be slightly confusing if you have worked with inferior package management systems in the past.

For example, if we:

 mkdir anotherapp/
 cd anotherapp/
 touch test.js

test.js

 var HTTPServer = require('http-server');

and then run the script...

 node test.js

we'll get this error:

 node.js:134 throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
 Error: Cannot find module 'http-server'
 at Function._resolveFilename (module.js:326:11)
 at Function._load (module.js:271:25)
 at require (module.js:355:19)
 at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/maraksquires/dev/nodeapps/anotherapp/test.js:1:80)
 at Module._compile (module.js:411:26)
 at Object..js (module.js:417:10)
 at Module.load (module.js:343:31)
 at Function._load (module.js:302:12)
 at Array.<anonymous> (module.js:430:10)
 at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:126:26)

This is logical, we installed http-server locally into "/mynewapp/", not in "/anotherapp/".

There are two direct solutions to fix this:

a) Install the package again, but locally into our new application

 cd anotherapp/
 npm install http-server

b) Install the package globally

 npm install http-server -g

Global Package Installation back to top

If you want to have a package available globally use:

 npm install http-server -g

The -g flag will indicate that http-server should be installed globally, and be available for all node scripts to require.

Now, we can require('http-server') in any node script on our system.

In addition, since the http-server package has specified a bin property, it will also install a binary script called http-server globally.

Now you can simply run the command:

 http-server

Uninstalling a package locally

 cd mynewapp/
 npm uninstall http-server

Uninstalling a package globally

npm uninstall http-server -g

Installing a specific version of a package back to top

 cd mynewapp/
 npm install http-server@0.3.0

Cloning a module from Github

This is important. In some cases, there will be patches, forks, or branches that we will want to use for our module, but have not yet been published to npm. Thankfully, the source code for most npm modules is also available on Github.com

 git clone git://github.com/nodeapps/http-server.git
 cd http-server/
 npm link

Our cloned version of http-server is now linked locally

Linking any npm package locally

If you have a local directory containing an npm package, you can link this package locally. This is good for development purposes and for situations when we do not want to publish our package to the public npm repository.

 cd http-server/
 npm link

Our local version of http-server is "linked" on our local machine

Linking local npm packages to multiple applications back to top

As we've seen before, npm will install packages into the local directory by default. npm link works pretty much the same way.

 mkdir newapp/
 cd newapp/
 npm link http-server

This indicates that we've now linked http-server into our new application newapp. If we had not run npm link http-server we would have gotten a missing module error

Unlinking a npm package from an application

 cd newapp/
 npm unlink http-server

Unlinking a npm package from your system

 cd http-server/
 npm unlink

Create a new npm package

 mkdir mypackage/
 cd mypackage/
 npm init

Creating a new user account on npm

 npm adduser

Publishing a npm package back to top

 cd mypackage/
 npm publish

Unpublishing a npm package

 npm unpublish http-server

Managing owners of packages

If you want multiple users to be able to publish to the same package:

 npm owner add marak http-server
 npm owner rm marak http-server
 npm owner ls http-server

For additional information on the package.json format and npm best practices, check out Charlie Robbin's article: http://blog.nodejitsu.com/package-dependencies-done-right