Most Useful NPM Commands

NPM stands for Node Package Manager and it is a package manager for JavaScript committed to making JavaScript development elegant, productive, and safe. Here I have shared some useful npm commands.

Get Version

npm --version
// shorthand
npm -v

Create Package.json

npm init
// Below commands will create package.json file with default values
npm init -y
npm init --yes

Install Packages

Global Package

npm install -g package-name

Production Package (default)

npm install --save package-name

Development Package

npm install --save-dev package-name

Install Specific Version

Global Package

npm install -g package-name@package-version

Production Package(default)

npm install --save package-name@package-version

Development Package

npm install --save-dev package-name@package-version

Remove Packages

Global Package

npm uninstall -g package-name

Production Package(default)

npm uninstall --save package-name

Development Package

npm uninstall --save-dev package-name

Clone another repo

When clone any repo, that time node_modules folder don’t get copy on local machine. So in that case to download all packages -use npm i

Install production and dev dependencies both

npm install
or
npm i

Install production dependencies only

npm install --production

List Packages

Globally

npm list -g
npm list -g --depth 0
npm list -g --depth 1

Locally

npm list
npm list --depth 0
npm list --depth 1

NPM Scripts

only “start” script will execute without run command

npm start
npm run <script-name>
   npm run build
   npm run test

Package Versions

What package version with different symbols (*,~, ^) represents in package.json file

Note: “^16.8.0” is the most preferred version.

Also Read:

• Most Important NPM Interview Questions