Question

Specifics of npm's package.json handling

Description

This document is all you need to know about what's required in your package.json file. It must be actual JSON, not just a JavaScript object literal.

A lot of the behavior described in this document is affected by the config settings described in name

If you plan to publish your package, the most important things in your package.json are the name and version fields as they will be required. The name and version together form an identifier that is assumed to be completely unique. Changes to the package should come along with changes to the version. If you don't plan to publish your package, the name and version fields are optional.

The name is what your thing is called.

Some rules:

• The name must be less than or equal to 214 characters. This includes the scope for scoped packages.
• The name can't start with a dot or an underscore.
• New packages must not have uppercase letters in the name.
• The name ends up being part of a URL, an argument on the command line, and a folder name. Therefore, the name can't contain any non-URL-safe characters.

Some tips:

• Don't use the same name as a core Node module.
• Don't put "js" or "node" in the name. It's assumed that it's js, since you're writing a package.json file, and you can specify the engine using the "engines" field. (See below.)
• The name will probably be passed as an argument to require(), so it should be something short, but also reasonably descriptive.
• You may want to check the npm registry to see if there's something by that name already, before you get too attached to it. version

  If you plan to publish your package, the most important things in your package.json are the name and version fields as they will be required. The name and version together form an identifier that is assumed to be completely unique. Changes to the package should come along with changes to the version. If you don't plan to publish your package, the name and version fields are optional.

  Version must be parseable by description

  Put a description in it. It's a string. This helps people discover your package, as it's listed in npm search.

  keywords

  Put keywords in it. It's an array of strings. This helps people discover your package as it's listed in npm search.

  homepage

  The url to the project homepage.

  Example:

  "homepage": "https://github.com/owner/project#readme"
  

  bugs

  The url to your project's issue tracker and / or the email address to which issues should be reported. These are helpful for people who encounter issues with your package.

  It should look like this:

  { "url" : "https://github.com/owner/project/issues"
  , "email" : "project@hostname.com"
  }
  

  You can specify either one or both values. If you want to provide only a url, you can specify the value for "bugs" as a simple string instead of an object.

  If a url is provided, it will be used by the npm bugs command.

  license

  You should specify a license for your package so that people know how they are permitted to use it, and any restrictions you're placing on it.

  If you're using a common license such as BSD-2-Clause or MIT, add a current SPDX license identifier for the license you're using, like this:

  { "license" : "BSD-3-Clause" }
  

  You can check people fields: author, contributors

  The "author" is one person. "contributors" is an array of people. A "person" is an object with a "name" field and optionally "url" and "email", like this:

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

  Or you can shorten that all into a single string, and npm will parse it for you:

  "Barney Rubble <b@rubble.com> (http://barnyrubble.tumblr.com/)"
  

  Both email and url are optional either way.

  npm also sets a top-level "maintainers" field with your npm user info.

  files

  The optional files field is an array of file patterns that describes the entries to be included when your package is installed as a dependency. File patterns follow a similar syntax to .gitignore, but reversed: including a file, directory, or glob pattern (*, **/*, and such) will make it so that file is included in the tarball when it's packed. Omitting the field will make it default to ["*"], which means it will include all files.

  Some special files and directories are also included or excluded regardless of whether they exist in the files array (see below).

  You can also provide a .npmignore file in the root of your package or in subdirectories, which will keep files from being included. At the root of your package it will not override the "files" field, but in subdirectories it will. The .npmignore file works just like a .gitignore. If there is a .gitignore file, and .npmignore is missing, .gitignore's contents will be used instead.

  Files included with the "package.json#files" field cannot be excluded through .npmignore or .gitignore.

  Certain files are always included, regardless of settings:

  • package.json
  • README
  • CHANGES / CHANGELOG / HISTORY
  • LICENSE / LICENCE
  • NOTICE
  • The file in the "main" field

  README, CHANGES, LICENSE & NOTICE can have any case and extension.

  Conversely, some files are always ignored:

  • .git
  • CVS
  • .svn
  • .hg
  • .lock-wscript
  • .wafpickle-N
  • .*.swp
  • .DS_Store
  • ._*
  • npm-debug.log
  • .npmrc
  • node_modules
  • config.gypi
  • *.orig
  • package-lock.json (use shrinkwrap instead)

  main

  The main field is a module ID that is the primary entry point to your program. That is, if your package is named foo, and a user installs it, and then does require("foo"), then your main module's exports object will be returned.

  This should be a module ID relative to the root of your package folder.

  For most modules, it makes the most sense to have a main script and often not much else.

  browser

  If your module is meant to be used client-side the browser field should be used instead of the main field. This is helpful to hint users that it might rely on primitives that aren't available in Node.js modules. (e.g. window)

  bin

  A lot of packages have one or more executable files that they'd like to install into the PATH. npm makes this pretty easy (in fact, it uses this feature to install the "npm" executable.)

  To use this, supply a bin field in your package.json which is a map of command name to local file name. On install, npm will symlink that file into prefix/bin for global installs, or ./node_modules/.bin/ for local installs.

  For example, myapp could have this:

  { "bin" : { "myapp" : "./cli.js" } }
  

  So, when you install myapp, it'll create a symlink from the cli.js script to /usr/local/bin/myapp.

  If you have a single executable, and its name should be the name of the package, then you can just supply it as a string. For example:

  { "name": "my-program"
  , "version": "1.2.5"
  , "bin": "./path/to/program" }
  

  would be the same as this:

  { "name": "my-program"
  , "version": "1.2.5"
  , "bin" : { "my-program" : "./path/to/program" } }
  

  Please make sure that your file(s) referenced in bin starts with #!/usr/bin/env node, otherwise the scripts are started without the node executable!

  man

  Specify either a single file or an array of filenames to put in place for the man program to find.

  If only a single file is provided, then it's installed such that it is the result from man <pkgname>, regardless of its actual filename. For example:

  { "name" : "foo"
  , "version" : "1.2.3"
  , "description" : "A packaged foo fooer for fooing foos"
  , "main" : "foo.js"
  , "man" : "./man/doc.1"
  }
  

  would link the ./man/doc.1 file in such that it is the target for man foo

  If the filename doesn't start with the package name, then it's prefixed. So, this:

  { "name" : "foo"
  , "version" : "1.2.3"
  , "description" : "A packaged foo fooer for fooing foos"
  , "main" : "foo.js"
  , "man" : [ "./man/foo.1", "./man/bar.1" ]
  }
  

  will create files to do man foo and man foo-bar.

  Man files must end with a number, and optionally a .gz suffix if they are compressed. The number dictates which man section the file is installed into.

  { "name" : "foo"
  , "version" : "1.2.3"
  , "description" : "A packaged foo fooer for fooing foos"
  , "main" : "foo.js"
  , "man" : [ "./man/foo.1", "./man/foo.2" ]
  }
  

  will create entries for man foo and man 2 foo

  directories

  The CommonJS directories.lib

  Tell people where the bulk of your library is. Nothing special is done with the lib folder in any way, but it's useful meta info.

  directories.bin

  If you specify a bin directory in directories.bin, all the files in that folder will be added.

  Because of the way the bin directive works, specifying both a bin path and setting directories.bin is an error. If you want to specify individual files, use bin, and for all the files in an existing bin directory, use directories.bin.

  directories.man

  A folder that is full of man pages. Sugar to generate a "man" array by walking the folder.

  directories.doc

  Put markdown files in here. Eventually, these will be displayed nicely, maybe, someday.

  directories.example

  Put example scripts in here. Someday, it might be exposed in some clever way.

  directories.test

  Put your tests in here. It is currently not exposed, but it might be in the future.

  repository

  Specify the place where your code lives. This is helpful for people who want to contribute. If the git repo is on GitHub, then the npm docs command will be able to find you.

  Do it like this:

  "repository": {
    "type" : "git",
    "url" : "https://github.com/npm/cli.git"
  }
  
  "repository": {
    "type" : "svn",
    "url" : "https://v8.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/"
  }
  

  The URL should be a publicly available (perhaps read-only) url that can be handed directly to a VCS program without any modification. It should not be a url to an html project page that you put in your browser. It's for computers.

  For GitHub, GitHub gist, Bitbucket, or GitLab repositories you can use the same shortcut syntax you use for npm install:

  "repository": "npm/npm"
  
  "repository": "github:user/repo"
  
  "repository": "gist:11081aaa281"
  
  "repository": "bitbucket:user/repo"
  
  "repository": "gitlab:user/repo"
  

  If the package.json for your package is not in the root directory (for example if it is part of a monorepo), you can specify the directory in which it lives:

  "repository": {
    "type" : "git",
    "url" : "https://github.com/facebook/react.git",
    "directory": "packages/react-dom"
  }
  

  scripts

  The "scripts" property is a dictionary containing script commands that are run at various times in the lifecycle of your package. The key is the lifecycle event, and the value is the command to run at that point.

  See config

  A "config" object can be used to set configuration parameters used in package scripts that persist across upgrades. For instance, if a package had the following:

  { "name" : "foo"
  , "config" : { "port" : "8080" } }
  

  and then had a "start" command that then referenced the npm_package_config_port environment variable, then the user could override that by doing npm config set foo:port 8001.

  See dependencies

  Dependencies are specified in a simple object that maps a package name to a version range. The version range is a string which has one or more space-separated descriptors. Dependencies can also be identified with a tarball or git URL.

  Please do not put test harnesses or transpilers in your dependencies object. See devDependencies, below.

  See URLs as Dependencies

  You may specify a tarball URL in place of a version range.

  This tarball will be downloaded and installed locally to your package at install time.

  Git URLs as Dependencies

  Git urls are of the form:

  <protocol>://[<user>[:<password>]@]<hostname>[:<port>][:][/]<path>[#<commit-ish> | #semver:<semver>]
  

  <protocol> is one of git, git+ssh, git+http, git+https, or git+file.

  If #<commit-ish> is provided, it will be used to clone exactly that commit. If the commit-ish has the format #semver:<semver>, <semver> can be any valid semver range or exact version, and npm will look for any tags or refs matching that range in the remote repository, much as it would for a registry dependency. If neither #<commit-ish> or #semver:<semver> is specified, then master is used.

  Examples:

  git+ssh://git@github.com:npm/cli.git#v1.0.27
  git+ssh://git@github.com:npm/cli#semver:^5.0
  git+https://isaacs@github.com/npm/cli.git
  git://github.com/npm/cli.git#v1.0.27
  

  GitHub URLs

  As of version 1.1.65, you can refer to GitHub urls as just "foo": "user/foo-project". Just as with git URLs, a commit-ish suffix can be included. For example:

  {
    "name": "foo",
    "version": "0.0.0",
    "dependencies": {
      "express": "expressjs/express",
      "mocha": "mochajs/mocha#4727d357ea",
      "module": "user/repo#feature\/branch"
    }
  }
  

  Local Paths

  As of version 2.0.0 you can provide a path to a local directory that contains a package. Local paths can be saved using npm install -S or npm install --save, using any of these forms:

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

  in which case they will be normalized to a relative path and added to your package.json. For example:

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

  This feature is helpful for local offline development and creating tests that require npm installing where you don't want to hit an external server, but should not be used when publishing packages to the public registry.

  devDependencies

  If someone is planning on downloading and using your module in their program, then they probably don't want or need to download and build the external test or documentation framework that you use.

  In this case, it's best to map these additional items in a devDependencies object.

  These things will be installed when doing npm link or npm install from the root of a package, and can be managed like any other npm configuration param. See peerDependencies

  In some cases, you want to express the compatibility of your package with a host tool or library, while not necessarily doing a require of this host. This is usually referred to as a plugin. Notably, your module may be exposing a specific interface, expected and specified by the host documentation.

  For example:

  {
    "name": "tea-latte",
    "version": "1.3.5",
    "peerDependencies": {
      "tea": "2.x"
    }
  }
  

  This ensures your package tea-latte can be installed along with the second major version of the host package tea only. npm install tea-latte could possibly yield the following dependency graph:

  ├── tea-latte@1.3.5
  └── tea@2.2.0
  

  NOTE: npm versions 1 and 2 will automatically install peerDependencies if they are not explicitly depended upon higher in the dependency tree. In the next major version of npm (npm@3), this will no longer be the case. You will receive a warning that the peerDependency is not installed instead. The behavior in npms 1 & 2 was frequently confusing and could easily put you into dependency hell, a situation that npm is designed to avoid as much as possible.

  Trying to install another plugin with a conflicting requirement will cause an error. For this reason, make sure your plugin requirement is as broad as possible, and not to lock it down to specific patch versions.

  Assuming the host complies with bundledDependencies

  This defines an array of package names that will be bundled when publishing the package.

  In cases where you need to preserve npm packages locally or have them available through a single file download, you can bundle the packages in a tarball file by specifying the package names in the bundledDependencies array and executing npm pack.

  For example:

  If we define a package.json like this:

  {
    "name": "awesome-web-framework",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "bundledDependencies": [
      "renderized", "super-streams"
    ]
  }
  

  we can obtain awesome-web-framework-1.0.0.tgz file by running npm pack. This file contains the dependencies renderized and super-streams which can be installed in a new project by executing npm install awesome-web-framework-1.0.0.tgz.

  If this is spelled "bundleDependencies", then that is also honored.

  optionalDependencies

  If a dependency can be used, but you would like npm to proceed if it cannot be found or fails to install, then you may put it in the optionalDependencies object. This is a map of package name to version or url, just like the dependencies object. The difference is that build failures do not cause installation to fail.

  It is still your program's responsibility to handle the lack of the dependency. For example, something like this:

  try {
    var foo = require('foo')
    var fooVersion = require('foo/package.json').version
  } catch (er) {
    foo = null
  }
  if ( notGoodFooVersion(fooVersion) ) {
    foo = null
  }
  
  // .. then later in your program ..
  
  if (foo) {
    foo.doFooThings()
  }
  

  Entries in optionalDependencies will override entries of the same name in dependencies, so it's usually best to only put in one place.

  engines

  You can specify the version of node that your stuff works on:

  { "engines" : { "node" : ">=0.10.3 <0.12" } }
  

  And, like with dependencies, if you don't specify the version (or if you specify "*" as the version), then any version of node will do.

  If you specify an "engines" field, then npm will require that "node" be somewhere on that list. If "engines" is omitted, then npm will just assume that it works on node.

  You can also use the "engines" field to specify which versions of npm are capable of properly installing your program. For example:

  { "engines" : { "npm" : "~1.0.20" } }
  

  Unless the user has set the engine-strict config flag, this field is advisory only and will only produce warnings when your package is installed as a dependency.

  engineStrict

  This feature was removed in npm 3.0.0

  Prior to npm 3.0.0, this feature was used to treat this package as if the user had set engine-strict. It is no longer used.

  os

  You can specify which operating systems your module will run on:

  "os" : [ "darwin", "linux" ]
  

  You can also blacklist instead of whitelist operating systems, just prepend the blacklisted os with a '!':

  "os" : [ "!win32" ]
  

  The host operating system is determined by process.platform

  It is allowed to both blacklist, and whitelist, although there isn't any good reason to do this.

  cpu

  If your code only runs on certain cpu architectures, you can specify which ones.

  "cpu" : [ "x64", "ia32" ]
  

  Like the os option, you can also blacklist architectures:

  "cpu" : [ "!arm", "!mips" ]
  

  The host architecture is determined by process.arch

  preferGlobal

  DEPRECATED

  This option used to trigger an npm warning, but it will no longer warn. It is purely there for informational purposes. It is now recommended that you install any binaries as local devDependencies wherever possible.

  private

  If you set "private": true in your package.json, then npm will refuse to publish it.

  This is a way to prevent accidental publication of private repositories. If you would like to ensure that a given package is only ever published to a specific registry (for example, an internal registry), then use the publishConfig dictionary described below to override the registry config param at publish-time.

  publishConfig

  This is a set of config values that will be used at publish-time. It's especially handy if you want to set the tag, registry or access, so that you can ensure that a given package is not tagged with "latest", published to the global public registry or that a scoped module is private by default.

  Any config values can be overridden, but only "tag", "registry" and "access" probably matter for the purposes of publishing.

  See DEFAULT VALUES

  npm will default some values based on package contents.

  • "scripts": {"start": "node server.js"}

    If there is a server.js file in the root of your package, then npm will default the start command to node server.js.

  • "scripts":{"install": "node-gyp rebuild"}

    If there is a binding.gyp file in the root of your package and you have not defined an install or preinstall script, npm will default the install command to compile using node-gyp.

  • "contributors": [...]

    If there is an AUTHORS file in the root of your package, npm will treat each line as a Name <email> (url) format, where email and url are optional. Lines which start with a # or are blank, will be ignored.

  See Also

  • semver
  • npm-init
  • npm-version
  • npm-config
  • npm-config
  • npm-help
  • npm-install
  • npm-publish
  • npm-uninstall