Get email notifications when new version of a package published

Question

There used to be some projects available for achieving this rather useful task (one, two), but they seem to be shut down.

I came across the NPM hooks, but it doesn't give an out-of-the-box way to have human readable notifications (emails or something along those lines).

Since an average NodeJS app depends on a number of 3rd party packages and new versions of those are published with a striking pace, I'm a little bit surprised that this feature isn't built in NPM website in the first place.

I don't find doing npm outdated and so on terribly handy on a regular basis. Nobody wants routinely check for updates in case he just might get a notification when it happens.

So, how can we get email notifications when new version of a package published to NPM?

Answer 1

If the package is on GitHub as most are you can also use RSS feed notifcations:

https://github.com/THE_PACKAGE_REPO/releases.atom

Then use the many available methods to get notified. I download a free simple app from MacOS App Store that checks at interals.

Answer 2

Have a look: http://blog.npmjs.org/post/145260155635/introducing-hooks-get-notifications-of-npm

That may help you to get started...

Answer 3

It's definitely not ideal, but one trick I've used is to put this:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/PACKAGE-NAME/v/2.0.0

as the URL in an uptime monitoring service and set it to notify you based on the existence of a keyword string (uptime robot has this on their free plan) that will definitely occur in the README. This only works if you're waiting to be notified for a specific version number that you know will be published at some point.