Open index. html in your browser and, if everything went right, you should see the following text Hello webpack. Modules. The import and export statements have been. Npm is the package manager for JavaScript and the worlds largest software registry. Discover packages of reusable code and assemble them in powerful new ways. Why npm Scripts CSS Tricks. The following is a guest post by Damon Bauer. There has been a growing sentiment for instance that using node packages directly, with the command line interfaces they provide, is a good route to take. As opposed to abstracting the functionality away behind a task runner. Partly you use npm anyway, npm provides scripting functionality, why not just use that But there is more to it than that. Damon will walk us through the thinking, but also exactly how to accomplish many of the most important tasks in a front end development build process. Ive started using npm scripts in my projects for about the last six months. Before that, I used Gulp and before that, Grunt. Theyve served me well and helped me perform my work faster and more efficiently by automating many of the things I used to do by hand. However, I started to feel that I was fighting the tools rather than focusing on my own code. US/windows/solarwinds-network-performance-monitor/large/image-04-700x393.jpg' alt='Npm Download Package' title='Npm Download Package' />Grunt, Gulp, Broccoli, Brunch and the like all require you to fit your tasks into their paradigms and configurations. Each has its own syntaxes, quirks and gotchas that you need to learn. This adds code complexity, build complexity and makes you focus on fixing tooling rather than writing code. These build tools rely on plugins that wrap a core command line tool. This creates another layer of abstraction away from the core tool, which means more potential for bad things to happen. Npm Download Package' title='Npm Download Package' />Here are three problems Ive seen multiple times If a plugin doesnt exist for the command line tool you want to use, youre out of luck unless you write it. A plugin youre trying to use wraps an older version of the tool you want to use. Npm Download Package' title='Npm Download Package' />Features and documentation dont always match between the plugin youre using and the current version of the core tool. Errors arent always handled well. If a plugin fails, it might not pass along the error from the core tool, resulting in frustration and not really knowing how to debug the problem. But, bear in mind. Let me say this if you are happy with your current build system and it accomplishes all that you need it to do, you can keep using it Just because npm scripts are becoming more popular doesnt mean you should to jump ship. Keep focusing on writing your code instead of learning more tooling. The Beta release of ProGet 5. Check out the upgrades in this version a modernized UI, a new logo, reorganized high level concepts, and our new feature. How to download, install, and start using, the Heroku CLI. The Heroku CLI used to be part of the Heroku Toolbelt. If you start to get the feeling that youre fighting with your tools, thats when Id suggest considering npm scripts. If youve decided you want to investigate or start using npm scripts, keep reading Youll find plenty of example tasks in the rest of this post. TypeScript brings you optional static typechecking along with the latest ECMAScript features. Node-js-Tools-dlya-Visual-Studio-11.png' alt='Npm Download Package' title='Npm Download Package' />Also, Ive created npm build boilerplate with all of these tasks that you can use as a starting point. Lets get to it Writing npm scripts. Well be spending a majority of our time in a package. This is where all of our dependencies and scripts will live. Download 2. 1 You can download the tool on the download page. If you are using Node with NPM, you can install r. Heres a stripped down version from my boilerplate project. Dependencies. Well build up our package. Our scripts will go into the scripts object, and any tools we want to use will be installed and put into the dev. Dependencies object. Before we begin, heres a sample structure of the project Ill be referring to throughout this post Compile SCSS to CSSIm a heavy user of SCSS, so thats what Ill be working with. To compile SCSS to CSS, I turn to node sass. First, we need to install node sass do this by running the following in your command line npm install save dev node sass. This will install node sass in your current directory and add it to the dev. Dependencies object in your package. This is especially useful when someone else runs your project because they will have everything they need to get the project running. Once installed, we can use it on the command line node sass output style compressed o distcss srcscss. Lets break down what this command does. Starting at the end, it says look in the srcscss folder for any SCSS files output o flag the compiled CSS to distcss compress the output using the output style flag with compressed as the option. Now that weve got that working the the command line, lets move it to an npm script. In your package. Now, head back to the command line and run npm run scss. You will see the same output as running the node sass command directly in the command line. Any time we create an npm script in the remainder of this post, you can run it by using a command like the above. Just replace scss with the name of the task you want to run. As you will see, many of the command line tools well use have numerous options you can use to configure it exactly you see fit. For instance, heres the list of node sass options. Heres a different setup show how to pass multiple options scripts. Autoprefix CSS with Post. CSSNow that were compiling Scss to CSS, we can automatically add vendor prefixes using Autoprefixer Post. CSS. We can install multiple modules at the same time, separating them with spaces npm install save dev postcss cli autoprefixer. Were installing two modules because Post. CSS doesnt do anything by default. It relies on other plugins like Autoprefixer to manipulate the CSS you give it. With the necessary tools installed and saved to dev. Dependencies, add a new task in your scripts object scripts. This task says Hey postcss, use u flag autoprefixer to replace r flag any. Thats it Need to change the default browser support for autoprefixer Its easy to add to the script autoprefixer postcss u autoprefixer autoprefixer. Again, theres lot of options you can use to configure your own build postcss cli and autoprefixer. Linting Java. Script. Keeping a standard format and style when authoring code is important to keep errors to a minimum and increase developer efficiency. Linting helps us do that automatically, so lets add Java. Script linting by using eslint. Once again, install the package this time, lets use a shortcut npm i D eslint. This is the same as npm install save dev eslint. Once installed, well set up some basic rules to run our code against using eslint. Run the following to start a wizard eslint init. Id suggest choosing Answer questions about your style and answering the questions it asks. This will generate a new file in the root of your project that eslint will check your code against. Now, lets add a lint task to our package. Our lint task is 1. It looks for any Java. Script files in the srcjs folder and runs them against the configuration it generated earlier. Of course, you can get crazy with the options. Uglifying Java. Script files. Lets work on combining and minifying our Java. Script files, which we can use uglify js to do. Well need to install uglify js first npm i D uglify js. Then, we can set up our uglify task in package. One of the great things about npm scripts is that they are essentially an alias for a command line task that you want to run over and over. This means that you can use standard command line code right in your script This task uses two standard command line features, mkdir and amp. The first half of this task, mkdir p distjs says Create a folder structure mkdir, but only if it doesnt exist already p flag. Once that completes successfully, run the uglifyjs command. The lets you chain multiple commands together, running each one sequentially if the previous command completes successfully. The second half of this task tells uglifyjs to start with all of the JS files. Package Manager Anonymous. I didnt always use npm for front end package management. I tried a few, got stoked with one and converted all my co workers to it. It was a great client side package manager. Why Because it was so much like npm Until one day a bearded friend said, You know what else is like npm, dramatic pause,. Mind blown. Seriously why cant we use npm for front end There isnt a rule. It is the node package manager but the word node doesnt explicitly mean server only. Dont let anyone tell you npm is not for the client side. It is and works fantastically well for the front end. Easy To Installnpm comes with Node. So just install Node. This gives you the command npm in your terminal. Love at First Publish. Create a package. This describes your package. Or use npm init to ask a series of questions and npm will create a package. Once you have your package. This will create a new package on npmjs. Your package will now be installable by anyone who types npm install yourpackagename. Installing Packagesnpm install package to install a package found on npmjs. This will download the files to your nodemodules folder. Why is this cool Well later down the road you can install all your dependencies by simply typing the command npm install. Using on the Browser. In order to use node modules on the browser you will need a build tool. This might bother you. If this is a deal breaker then by all means continue wasting your life copying and pasting code and arranging your script tags. All package managers need build tools. Some say they dont but they are not being totally honest. It doesnt matter if you build by typing a command in your terminal or build upon a HTTP request or build inline as the page loads. Those are build tools. When you build does not negate that you build, sorry. So embrace a build tool. Building From the Console. Lets keep it simple. Install it with npm install browserify g. The g will install the package globally and give you access to the browserify command. Create an index. js entry point with the following var url requireurl. To bundle this to run on the browser type the command browserify index. This will create the file bundle. A Simple Module. Small modules are the reason why npm is so successful. They are easy to create, maintain and share. Create another file named hasher. Now modify your index. Moving logic into separate modules will help keep our app small and easy to maintain. Plus weve just started on the greatest url hash parsing library ever On the Shoulders of Everyone. What You dont want to write the worlds best url hash parsing library Well good news someone else probably already did. Search npmjs. org and I guarantee youll find oodles. At the time of this writing npm has over 3. Most of which are browserifyable. This is the advantage of creating and using lots of small modules. One module may not be a good fit for your project. It is trivial to swap out a small module for another. A quick npm search hash change revealed a few options. Lets go with hash change. After a quick peruse of the hash change read me we know how to use it. So lets edit our index. Goto page hash. Cool now I can get the hash and even know when it is changed. The best part is now I dont have to maintain the hash change code. Someone else now does that for me for free. Building Upon a HTTP Request. An alternative is to build as you request from the server. If you have lt script srcindex. You simply instruct your server to first compile that file and then give the results to the browser. A handy tool for javascript is called beefy npm install beefy g. It is a browserify wrapper for this exact purpose. Type beefy index. Then send your browser to http localhost 8. Stylesheets. The lazy way is to load assets directly from the nodemodules folder lt linktypetextcssrelstylesheethrefnodemodulespackagecssstyle. A method more similar to browserify is npm css. Install with npm install npm css g and bundle with npm css index. I dont enjoy writing CSS so I use a preprocessor. My preference is sasscompass but that requires Ruby which is a dependency hurdle most are comfortable jumping. There are many other CSS preprocessors available on npm though. Check out rework or stylus. Install rework with npm install rework g. Then create the following file style. We then bundle our css with rework v webkit,moz lt style. It does a lot more than that though so checkout reworks readme. Images. Images are fairly straight forward cp R nodemodulesmoduleimagesdistimages. Or just be lazy and load directly from the nodemodules folder. There are many modules on npm for creating spritesheets, sizing, applying filters, etc. If you wanted to get fancy. HTMLThe one thing npm might have too much of is template choices. You can keep it simple and just write plain HTML or choose from one of the hundreds of template options. My preference is plain HTML, embedded javascript for layouts and markdown for articlesposts. Tying it All Together. How are these tools are tied together is heavily debated. So Ill just describe the two ways I prefer but feel free to search out and use what works for you. Simple Shell Script. Shell scripts for small modules are easy to write. Just put the commands you would have normally typed into a file. Create a file named binbuild with the following binbash. R imgdistimg. Grunt. If you need build operations a bit more front end friendly consider Grunt. Grunt ties build operations together through a Gruntfile. Each of the tasks source input files and destination output files are normalized through a Grunt config. An example Gruntfile. Config. clean dist. Npm. Tasksgrunt contrib clean. Npm. Tasksgrunt contrib copy. Npm. Tasksgrunt rework. Npm. Tasksgrunt browserify. Cool Batch Files Matrix'>Cool Batch Files Matrix. Taskdefault, clean, browserify, rework, copy. First install the grunt cli tool globally with npm install grunt cli g. Automatic School Bell Software Free Download more. Then install grunt and the tasks we would like to use locally npm install grunt grunt contrib clean. Now when you run grunt anywhere within the project folder it will perform the steps in the default task youve registered. The advantages of Grunt really show when youre experimenting with new modules. Most Grunt tasks use the same config syntax. So you can more easily configure your build process without having to remember each module API. Conclusion. All package managers do relatively the same thing. Move files. Pick a package manager on how well it does that. All build tools do relatively the same thing. Transform files. Pick your build tools on how well they do that. If youre not using npm now solely because someone told you it isnt for client side. Slap them and say, npm all the things.