update-notifier-plus

Update notifications for your CLI app. Supports: GitHub (including private repos) or npm; custom install messages.

Inform users of your package of updates in a non-intrusive way.

How is this different from update-notifier?

This fork adds two features:

1. The ability to use a GitHub repo as your reference point, in which case it will match against the latest tag version. Private repos are also supported as long as you pass authentication (see examples below).
2. The option to specify a different install command while keeping the nice box design to the notify message. You might use this feature if you want to tell users to prepend sudo to their install command or add certain environment variables.

Table of Contents

• Examples
• How
• API
• About

Examples

Simple example

const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
const pkg = require('./package.json');

updateNotifier({pkg}).notify();

Comprehensive example

const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
const pkg = require('./package.json');

// Checks for available update and returns an instance
const notifier = updateNotifier({pkg});

// Notify using the built-in convenience method
notifier.notify();

// `notifier.update` contains some useful info about the update
console.log(notifier.update);
/*
{
	latest: '1.0.1',
	current: '1.0.0',
	type: 'patch', // possible values: latest, major, minor, patch, prerelease, build
	name: 'pageres'
}
*/

GitHub tag example

const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
const pkg = {
  pkg: require('./package.json'),
  registry: 'github',
  githubOwner: 'repo-owner'
}

// For private repos, add the following
// pkg.githubAuth = {
//   type: 'oauth', // For other types of authentication, see https:// github.com/mikedeboer/node-github#authentication
//   token: 'XXXXX'
// }

// Checks for available update and returns an instance
const notifier = updateNotifier(pkg);

// Notify using the built-in convenience method
notifier.notify();

// `notifier.update` contains some useful info about the update
console.log(notifier.update);
/*
{
  latest: '1.0.1',
  current: '1.0.0',
  type: 'patch', // possible values: latest, major, minor, patch, prerelease, build
  name: 'pageres'
}
*/

Example with settings and custom message

const notifier = updateNotifier({
  pkg,
  updateCheckInterval: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 // 1 week
});

console.log(`Update available: ${notifier.update.latest}`);

Example with custom install string

const notifier = updateNotifier({
	pkg: pkg,
	installString: 'sudo npm install -g <org>/<repo>'
});

// Prints the normal install box, replacing `npm install <pkg-name>` with your `installString`.

How

Whenever you initiate the update notifier and it's not within the interval threshold, it will asynchronously check with npm in the background for available updates, then persist the result. The next time the notifier is initiated the result will be loaded into the .update property. This prevents any impact on your package startup performance. The check process is done in a unref'ed child process. This means that if you call process.exit, the check will still be performed in its own process.

API

updateNotifier(options)

Checks if there is an available update. Accepts settings defined below. Returns an object with update info if there is an available update, otherwise undefined.

options

pkg

Type: object

name

Required Type: string

version

Required Type: string

updateCheckInterval

Type: number Default: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 (1 day)

How often to check for updates.

callback(error, update)

Type: function

Passing a callback here will make it check for an update directly and report right away. Not recommended as you won't get the benefits explained in How.

update is equal to notifier.update

updateNotifier.notify([options])

Convenience method to display a notification message (see screenshot).

Only notifies if there is an update and the process is TTY.

options.defer

Type: boolean Default: true

Defer showing the notification to after the process has exited.

options.message

Type: string Default: See the screen shot above

The message that will be shown when an update is available.

options.boxenOpts

Type: object Default: { padding: 1, margin: 1, align: 'center', borderColor: 'yellow', borderStyle: 'round' } (See the screen shot above)

The object that will be passed to boxen.

User settings

Users of your module have the ability to opt-out of the update notifier by changing the optOut property to true in ~/.config/configstore/update-notifier-[your-module-name].yml. The path is available in notifier.config.path.

Users can also opt-out by setting the environment variable NO_UPDATE_NOTIFIER with any value or by using the --no-update-notifier flag on a per run basis.

About

The idea for this module came from the desire to apply the browser update strategy to CLI tools, where everyone is always on the latest version. We first tried automatic updating, which we discovered wasn't popular. This is the second iteration of that idea, but limited to just update notifications.

There are a bunch projects using it:

• Yeoman - Modern workflows for modern webapps
• AVA - Simple concurrent test runner
• XO - JavaScript happiness style linter
• Pageres - Capture website screenshots
• Node GH - GitHub command line tool
• Bower - A package manager for the web
• Hoodie CLI - Hoodie command line tool
• Roots - A toolkit for advanced front-end development

And 600+ more...

License

BSD license and copyright Google