A basic, production ready NPM package skeleton.

How to use

Create a GitHub repository and download

Click the "Use this template" button and then clone your newly created repo to your machine with the command (inside your local dev directory):

git clone [email protected]:<YourGitHubUsername>/<RepoName>.git

// eg. git clone [email protected]:DanielWinning/node-package-template.git

Then cd into the new directory.

Edit package.json

Inside your projects package.json file, change the following line to <your-npm-username>/<package-name>. You can preface your vendor name (the first part) with an @ to make this a scoped package:

"name": "@my-org/node-package-template"

Run npm commands

Now run npm install && npm run build to install the required dev dependencies and compile the example code.

Remove example code

You can work on your package inside the src directory, currently src/index.js just exports the HelloWorld class from src/HelloWorld.js, which you can delete and add your own code. You can watch for changes with the npm run watch command and compile for production with the npm run build command.

Testing package before publishing

To test your package inside a project before publishing to NPM, you can use npm link to create a symbolic link to your package.

In the root of your package (same level as package.json), run:

npm link

Inside the project you want to test your package in, run:

npm link vendor/package-name

Now you can test your package - see the example below, this is how we would use the HelloWorld class inside our real world project:

import { HelloWorld } from "@my-org/node-package-template";

console.log(HelloWorld.greetWorld());

Added TDD

It's good practice to use Test Driven Development, so I've included jest. Write your tests inside the tests directory - an example using the HelloWorld class has been included. Run the command npm test to run your tests.

Publishing your package

When you're happy that your package is ready to be released into the wild, simply run npm publish or npm publish --access public if your package is scoped.