Create and publish a node.js module Back

1. What is npm?

npm is an online registry for open-source node.js projects, modules, resources, etc. Here is the official website.

npm is also the official package manager for node.js, and provides a command line interface (CLI) for interacting with the registry.

For you ruby devs, npm is akin to rubygems.

2. Configure npm

To set some information for our own:

npm set init.author.name "aleen42"
npm set init.author.email "[email protected]"
npm set init.author.url "http://aleen42.github.io/pc.html"

3. Create a module

The primary 2 items that we are concerned with here are require and exports. You require other modules that you wish to use in your code and your module exports anything that should be exposed publicly.

module.exports = {
    _hello: 1,

    printText: function(i) {
        this._hello += i;
        return this._hello;
    }
};

Then you can init the module with:

npm init

4. Create some tests

Here is to create tests with Mocha and Chai frameworks with the following commands.

Note that they are added to the 'devDependencies' section, as they are only required during development and not at runtime.

npm install mocha --save-dev
npm install chai --save-dev

The above commands will also create a node_modules folder in your project directory containing those dependencies. Following best practices, we'll want to keep the node_modules folder out of the git repository. We can do that by adding a .gitignore file to our project root, with the following contents:

node_modules

Then, create a test directory to hold tests by creating a file with the same name index.js

const should = require('chai').should();
const autoContent = require('../lib/index');

/** test case with should syntax provided by the Chai framework */
describe('tests', function () {
    it('test case 1', function () {
        autoContent.printText(3).should.equal(4);
    });
});

After that, a Makefile file can be created like the following:

test:
    ./node_modules/.bin/mocha --reporter nyan

.PHONY: test

Finally, the test scrit of package.json can be:

{
  // ...
  "scripts": {
    "test": "make test"
  },
  // ...
  "devDependencies": {
    "mocha": "~2.4.5",
    "chai": "~3.5.0"
  }
}

Here is the final files architecture:

lib

index.js

test

index.js

package.json

Makefile

node_modules

5. Write the Readme with convention

## auto-content

a node.js module for generating justified contents

## Installation

    npm install auto-content

## Usage

    const should = require('chai').should();
    const autoContent = require('../lib/index');

    console.log(autoContent.printText(1));

## Tests

    npm test

## Release History

* 0.1.0 Initial release

## :yum: How to contribute

Have an idea? Found a bug? See [how to contribute](https://aleen42.github.io/PersonalWiki/contribution.html).

## :scroll: License

[MIT](https://aleen42.github.io/PersonalWiki/MIT.html) © aleen42

6. Publish the module

Note that for whatever reason if you decide not to publish your module on npm, the npm package format provides value in itself in both portability and ease of installation. For example, you can install packages directly from Github, and even specify a tag, sha, or branch if you want.

npm install git://github.com/aleen42/auto-content.git
npm install git://github.com/aleen42/auto-content.git#0.1.0

Before publishing, be sure to test that your package installs and works correctly.

Verify that the package installs properly

After that, you can register this module with your npm account by using the following command:

npm adduser

Finally, just publish your module:

npm publish

With that, other developers can install your module by typing:

npm install auto-content

7. Advanced Topics

Lock all dependencies?

Create and publish a node.js module