Publishing npm packages

You can publish any directory that has a package.json file, e.g. a node module.

Creating a user

To publish, you must have a user on the npm registry. If you don't have one, create it with npm adduser. If you created one on the site, use npm login to store the credentials on the client.

Test: Use npm config ls to ensure that the credentials are stored on your client. Check that it has been added to the registry by going to https://npmjs.com/~.

Publishing the package

Use npm publish to publish the package.

Note that everything in the directory will be included unless it is ignored by a local .gitignore or .npmignore file as described in npm-developers.

Also make sure there isn't already a package with the same name, owned by somebody else.

Test: Go to https://npmjs.com/package/<package>. You should see the information for your new package.

Updating the package

When you make changes, you can update the package using npm version <update_type>, where update_type is one of the semantic versioning release types, patch, minor, or major. This command will change the version number in package.json. Note that this will also add a tag with this release number to your git repository if you have one.

After updating the version number, you can npm publish again.

Test: Go to https://npmjs.com/package/<package>. The package number should be updated.

The README displayed on the site will not be updated unless a new version of your package is published, so you would need to run npm version patch and npm publish to have a documentation fix displayed on the site.