Node.js Web Development - Fourth Edition

The npm package format

An npm package is a directory structure with a package.json file describing the package. This is exactly what was referred to earlier as a directory module, except that npm recognizes many more package.json tags than Node.js does. The starting point for npm's package.json are the CommonJS Packages/1.0 specification. The documentation for npm's package.json implementation is accessed using the following command:

$  npm help json

A basic package.json file is as follows:

{ "name": "packageName", 
   "version": "1.0", 
   "main": "mainModuleName", 
   "modules": { 
    "mod1": "lib/mod1", 
    "mod2": "lib/mod2" 
  } 
} 

The file is in JSON format, which, as a JavaScript programmer, you should be familiar with.

The most important tags are name and ...