How to Code And Publish Your First NPM package🎖

Introduction

Hello Developers
In this Article we would learn how do you Code and publish your first NPM package.
Publishing an NPM package is easy and in this tutorial we would make a very simple package which requires very few lines of Code.

What is NPM?

NPM stands for Node Package Manager, as the name suggests it is a package manager, and is also the default package manager for JavaScript runtime environment Node.js.

Prerequisites

Node.js and npm installed in your system- You can install Node.js and npm(if you haven't already) from here

Basic knowledge of JavaScript- The package we'll make here is simple so you don't need very high knowledge of JavaScript.

Basic Terminal Commands- I would be using a few basic terminal commands but I will explain the npm and node commands which I would use in the Article.

A Code editor- In this tutorial I would be using VS Code but you can use any editor of your choice.

Lets get Started

Step 1: Create an account on https://www.npmjs.com/signup

Step 2: Login to your CLI by your npm account

To do this, simply type this command in the terminal

$ npm login

And enter the following details:

To check if you have successfully logged in, type the following command and it shall print your username:

$ npm whoami

Step 3: Setting up the directory

You can accomplish this task by typing these commands onto your terminal/CLI:

$ mkdir folder_name
$ cd path/to/folder

mkdir - mkdir command is used to create a directory or a folder directly from your Terminal.
cd - cd command is used to change the current working directory in the terminal.

Step 4: Package.json

To initialize the package.json file, type this command in the CLI

$ npm init

And then answer the questions asked, if you want you can skip any question by clicking Enter.

What is package.json?
Package.json is a necessary file which contains information about your project
Such as package name, version,author's name etc.

Step 5: Let's Code

Now that we have a package.json file, we can get onto coding.
Create an index.js file and write this code into it

const object = {
  add: function addTwoNumbers(a,b){
    return a+b;
  }
}

module.exports = object;

Code Explanation

const object - The object object which is exported to be used by others.
function addTwoNumbers() - This is the function stored in the object which can be used by others, it is marked as 'add' and it simply returns the sum of two numbers a and b.
module.exports - the object object is then exported by declaring this.

Step 6: Time to Publish

To publish your newly made npm package, head over to the terminal and type this command

$ npm publish

If you get this message:

Then congratulations! Your NPM package has been successfully published and can be used by anyone :)
The Github Repository link of this package: https://github.com/HarshSinha17/maths-script

Testing the package

So now that we have made our NPM package, we shall try it, to test the package follow these steps:

Create a fresh directory and cd into it

This can now again be done by terminal by the following commands

$ mkdir folder_name
$ cd path/to/folder

Initialize the package.json

Type this command on the terminal, but this time with the -y flag, so that we don't have to answer any questions and a default package.json file will be created.

$ npm init -y

Install the Package

To install the package type this command

$ npm install maths-script

(Here maths-script is the name of the package)
Now a folder named node_modules and a file named package-lock.json must be created in the directory.

Lets code

Create a file named app.js and paste this code in the file

const maths = require('maths-script');

var a = maths.add(1, 2);
console.log(a);

Code Explanation -

The code is pretty simple, first we are storing the exports of the package in a constant maths.
Then we are using the function add of the NPM package for adding two numbers, 1 and 2, and storing it in variable a, and then printing the var a to the console.

Running the file

To run the file, type this command in the Terminal

$ node app.js

(app.js is the name of our file)
And then you should get the following output-

So we see that the output is 3, which means that our NPM package is working!

Conclusion

So in this article we learned how to create an NPM package, hope you found the article helpful and if you face any problem in making your own package, put a comment down below so maybe I can provide any help I can

Thanks
(˵ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°˵)

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