how to specify local modules as npm package dependencies

340
votes

I have an application which has the usual set of dependencies on third party modules (e.g. 'express') specified in the package.json file under dependencies. E.g.

"express"     : "3.1.1"

I would like to structure my own code modularly and have a set of local (meaning on the file system i am currently in) modules be installed by the package.json. I know that i can install a local module by running:

npm install path/to/mymodule

However, I don't know how to make this happen via the package.json dependencies structure. Using the --save option in this command is simply putting "mymodule": "0.0.0" into my package.json (doesn't reference the filepath location). If i then remove the installed version from node_modules, and try to re-install from the package.json, it fails (because it looks for "mymodule" in the central registry, and doesn't look locally).

I'm sure the is a way of telling the "dependencies": {} structure that I want it to be installed from a file system path, but don't know how.

Anyone else had this problem? Thanks.

6
node.jsnpm
A really good question. Sad to realise that there is no feature equivalent for package.json to what we have in Gemfiles. – Jarl
possible duplicate of Local dependency in package.json – Kelly

6 Answers

521
votes

npm install now supports this

npm install --save ../path/to/mymodule

For this to work mymodule must be configured as a module with its own package.json. See Creating NodeJS modules.

As of npm 2.0, local dependencies are supported natively. See danilopopeye's answer to a similar question. I've copied his response here as this question ranks very high in web search results.

This feature was implemented in the version 2.0.0 of npm. For example:

{
  "name": "baz",
  "dependencies": {
    "bar": "file:../foo/bar"
  }
}

Any of the following paths are also valid:

../foo/bar
~/foo/bar
./foo/bar
/foo/bar

syncing updates

Since npm install copies mymodule into node_modules, changes in mymodule's source will not automatically be seen by the dependent project.

There are two ways to update the dependent project with

  • Update the version of mymodule and then use npm update: As you can see above, the package.json "dependencies" entry does not include a version specifier as you would see for normal dependencies. Instead, for local dependencies, npm update just tries to make sure the latest version is installed, as determined by mymodule's package.json. See chriskelly's answer to this specific problem.

  • Reinstall using npm install. This will install whatever is at mymodule's source path, even if it is older, or has an alternate branch checked out, whatever.

15
votes

I couldn't find a neat way in the end so I went for create a directory called local_modules and then added this bashscript to the package.json in scripts->preinstall

#!/bin/sh
for i in $(find ./local_modules -type d -maxdepth 1) ; do
    packageJson="${i}/package.json"
    if [ -f "${packageJson}" ]; then
        echo "installing ${i}..."
        npm install "${i}"
    fi
done
6
votes

After struggling much with the npm link command (suggested solution for developing local modules without publishing them to a registry or maintaining a separate copy in the node_modules folder), I built a small npm module to help with this issue.

The fix requires two easy steps.

First:

npm install lib-manager --save-dev

Second, add this to your package.json:

{  
  "name": "yourModuleName",  
  // ...
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "./node_modules/.bin/local-link"
  }
}

More details at https://www.npmjs.com/package/lib-manager. Hope it helps someone.

1
votes

If it's acceptible to simply publish your modules preinstalled in node_modules alongside your other files, you can do it like this:

// ./node_modules/foo/package.json
{ 
  "name":"foo",
  "version":"0.0.1",
  "main":"index.js"
}

// ./package.json
...
"dependencies": {
  "foo":"0.0.1",
  "bar":"*"
}

// ./app.js
var foo = require('foo');

You may also want to store your module on git and tell your parent package.json to install the dependency from git: https://npmjs.org/doc/json.html#Git-URLs-as-Dependencies

0
votes

At work we have a common library that is used by a few different projects all in a single repository. Originally we used the published (private) version (npm install --save rp-utils) but that lead to a lot of needless version updates as we developed. The library lives in a sister directory to the applications and we are able to use a relative path instead of a version. Instead of "rp-utils": "^1.3.34" in package.json it now is:

{ 
  "dependencies": { ...
    "rp-utils": "../rp-utils",
   ...

the rp-utils directory contains a publishable npm package