Otherwise, After starting with Git, GitHub, and open source projects, you will find a lot of projects using Node.js and Npm packages. Node.js is not only a tool to create web application backends. Also, is used as a development platform for large scale projects to manage dependencies and perform operations in the project lifecycle. His companion, Npm, is a package manager to make available a large ecosystem of modules and functionalities used in the development stage, in the project itself and in the development pipeline.
Installing Node.js
You can install Node.js in different ways depending on your OS. Npm will be installed along with Node. You can download an official installer. Also, you can install Node.js using a package manager :
- MacOS:
- With HomeBrew
brew install node
- Using MacPorts:
port install nodejs8
- With HomeBrew
- Debian/Ubuntu
- For Node.js
wget -q0- https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
- For Node.js
- Windows
- Download the installer
- Using Chocolatey
- cinst nodejs.install
- Using Scoop
- scoop install nodejs
Checking your installation
Check your current version of Node.js and Npm using the following commands:
node --version
npm --version
Also, you can request an update of Node.js with the following commands:
- With HomeBrew:
brew update
brew upgrade node
- With MacPorts
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install nodejs
Using Node.js
As a command line interpreter
You can create and run your own scripts written in javascript
in a console. For example, you can create a file named test.js
:
console.log("Hello world");
And then run your script using the command
node test.js
Then , the output will be:
Hello world
As a local http server
You can serve local files right from your console using Node http-server module. First of all you need to install the http-server
Npm package (-g
option is to install it for all users) :
npm install -g http-server
Then you can serve your files in any folder using the simple command
http-server
By default, it listens in the 8080
port, for example, http://localhost:8080/
). Also, you can specify the server port with the -p option and a target home directory:
http-server -p 8000 ./
In this case, its serving your files from the relative ./
folder (current) using the port 8000
Users-MacBook-Pro-6:Downloads user$ http-server -p 8000 ./ Starting up http-server, serving ./ Available on: http://127.0.0.1:8000 http://192.168.1.71:8000 Hit CTRL-C to stop the server
Using Npm
To install global packages
Use the option -g to install any package as global (available for all users)
npm install -g package-name
To setup and manage project dependencies
Use npm init
to start a new node package definition. It creates the default npm files and structures, and asks for some basic information about your package. It’s better to setup a npm project after the git initialization, to keep it synchronized with a git repository.
Use npm install
to install project dependencies already defined in the project.