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 "aleen42@vip.qq.com"
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
## <img align='absmiddle' alt=':yum:' class='emoji' src='/gitbook/gitbook-plugin-advanced-emoji/emojis/yum.png' title=':yum:' /> How to contribute
Have an idea? Found a bug? See [how to contribute](https://aleen42.github.io/PersonalWiki/contribution.html).
## <img align='absmiddle' alt=':scroll:' class='emoji' src='/gitbook/gitbook-plugin-advanced-emoji/emojis/scroll.png' title=':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
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