Resources

NPM docs:

Base

A package.json file, based mostly on the default one you get fron npm init and accepting defaults. Spaces will be removed by NPM but help here for readability.

It can be useful to put scripts near the top like here and dependencies at the bottom, to make it easy to regularly check what scripts are configured.

Sample

{
    "name": "package-name",
    "description": "Foo all the bars",

    "version": "1.0.0",
    "keywords": [
        "foo",
        "bar"
    ],
    "author": "FIRSTNAME SURNAME <FIRSTNAME.SURNAME@gmail.com> (https://github.com/USERNAME)",
    "license": "MIT",

    "main": "index.js",
    "scripts": {
      "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },

    "repository": {
      "type": "git",
      "url": "https://github.com/USERNAME/REPO_NAME.git"
    },
    "bugs": {
      "url": "https://github.com/USERNAME/REPO_NAME/issues"
    }
 }

Notes:

  • The empty are added here for readibility and grouping of related areas - when you do an npm command which updates your package.json file, all the empty lines will be removed.
  • From the docs: “If you don’t plan to publish your package, the name and version fields are optional.”
  • Optionally include “homepage” with a URL such as GitHub Pages to Netlify URL for the service or docs site.

See my customized package.json file in my node-project-template repo.

Fields

Author

Either of these are fine as "author" values, according to the docs.

{
    "name" : "Barney Rubble",
    "email" : "b@rubble.com",
    "url" : "https://barnyrubble.tumblr.com/"
}

"Barney Rubble <b@rubble.com> (s)"

Files

Sample

{
  "main": "lib/index.js",
  "files": [
    "dist",
    "lib",
    "es",
    "src"
  ],
}

Dependencies

Sample

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "react-scripts": "^0.6.1"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "history": "^4.2.0",
    "prop-types": "^15.5.9",
    "react": "^16.1.1",
    "react-dom": "^16.1.1",
    "react-url-query": "^1"
  }
}