npm_configuration_1.md

Node Package Manager (NPM), Part 1: Initialization

Throughout the JavaScript and React portions of the App Academy curriculum, you will use Node Package Manager, or npm, to install and manage JavaScript dependencies (which are called node modules). npm is the default package manager for Node.js; yarn and pnpm are examples of other popular package managers.

This series of readings will explain what npm does and how you can use it to manage multiple JS dependencies. This first reading covers initialization.

Generating a package.json with npm init

To initialize an app with NPM, run this command in the app's root directory:

npm init -y

This initialization will create a file called package.json that contains settings and other information about your app. The -y (or --yes) flag tells NPM to set up the package.json with standard defaults. The end result will look something like this:

{
  "name": "current-directory-name",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}

Don't worry about the default settings; they won't affect how your app runs, and you can always adjust them later.

If you leave off the -y flag, then npm init will ask you to input the values you want for each of those keys. For what it's worth, you could also construct a package.json manually, but using NPM's CLI (command line interface) is just easier.

In the next NPM reading, you will learn how to install packages.