To initialize an NPM project, cd into the root of your project directory and run:

npm init

• package name is your project's name (default to folder name).
• entry point is the file that should be run to start the application (e.g. app.js ,index.js, etc.)
• By default, no script will be generated. You need to write the start yourself.

NPM Scripts

To write additional  npm scripts, go into the newly generated package.json file and edit the "scripts": {} object.

{
  "name": "my_node_package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Just a simple node project.",
  "main": "./app.js",
  "scripts": {    "start": "node ./app.js",    "test": "echo \\"Error: no test specified\\" && exit 1",    "foo": "echo bar"  },  "author": "Romson Preechawit (Woods)",
  "license": ""
}

To run the script, do:

npm run foo

npm start

start is the only script that can be run using the shorthand npm start without adding the run command. Other scripts need to use the full npm run <SCRIPT_NAME> syntax.

npm start

Passing arguments to an NPM scripts

To pass arguments to a script, do:

npm run <SCRIPT_NAME> -- <ARGUMENTS>

For example, in the case of "build": "ng build", we can do:

npm run build -- --prod

NPM Dependencies Management

npm install <PACKAGE_NAME>

Common options:

• --save-dev only save this in development dependencies
• --save will save for production as well
• -g will install the package globally. You normally don't want to do this as the dependencies should be encapsulated within the project itself.

For example:

npm install nodemon --save-dev

This will add these line in our package.json

"devDependencies": {
    "nodemon": "^2.0.4"
}