Node.js Tutorial - Node.js Semantic NPM

• « Previous
• Next »

You can tell NPM which version of a package you want.

Example

For example, the following code installs the exact version 1.0.3 of underscore. underscore is a package installed.

$ npm install underscore@1.0.3

You can tell NPM that you are okay with all patch versions of 1.0 using a tilde "~":

$ npm install underscore@"~1.0.0"

To tell NPM that you are okay with any minor version changes use "^":

$ npm install underscore@"^1.0.0"

Other version string operators supported include ">=" and ">", which have intuitive mathematical meanings, such as ">=1.4.2".

Similarly there are "<=" and "<" , for example, "<1.4.2".

There is also a * that can be used at various locations to match any number such as 1.0.*.

For example, 1.0.0, 1.0.1, and so on or 1.*, for example, 1.1.0, 1.3.4, and so on and simply *, which will get you the latest version every time.

You can use these semantic version strings in package.json as well.

Updating Dependencies

The following package.json tells NPM that your package is compatible with any minor upgrade on v1.6.0 of underscore:

"dependencies": { 
    "underscore": "^1.6.0" 
} 

Whenever you use --save flag, the default that NPM uses for updating package.json dependencies section is "^", preceded by the downloaded version.

The following command can get a package.json dependencies section:

$ npm install request@1.0.0 -save 

Following is the default version string added to package.json:

"dependencies": { 
    "request": "^1.0.0" 
} 

To find the latest online version that is compatible with the current semantic version specified in package.json (in this example ^1.0.0), you can run npm outdated.

The following code uses npm outdated to Check Latest Version of Packages

$ npm outdated 
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/request 
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/request 
Package Current Wanted Latest Location 
request 1.0.0 1.9.9 2.34.0 request 

To update these packages to the newest compatible version and save the results into your package.json, you can simply run the following command.

$ npm update -save

The Updated package.json

"dependencies": { 
    "request": "^1.9.9" 
} 

Updating Packages

To determine if your package is out of date, issue command npm outdated in your project directory.

npm outdated

npm outdated checks all of the local packages.

To check individual packages, specify their names.

To check global packages, use the -g option.

To update any outdated local packages, use the npm update command.

Update works on all local packages by default.

To update individual modules, specify their names.

To update global packages use the -g option.

The following code uses npm updates itself with the -g option.

npm update npm -g

• Next »
• « Previous