Running Local NPM Executables

Typically, npm command line executables are installed globally so you can run it from whatever project on your machine. However, sometimes you'll want to run a locally installed package. Here's how!

When npm packages with executables are installed locally, they are linked to ./node_modules/.bin within your project. To invoke them, you would have to enter the entire path pointing to the package name.

For example, if you've locally installed gulp for a single project, it would look something like this to invoke it from the project directory: ./node_modules/.bin/gulp

To make life easier, you can add this bit of script to your .bashrc:

npm-run() {
  $(npm bin)/$*
}

What's happening here is npm bin returns the path of where your executables are, and then the package name you want to invoke is inserted where the $* are.

So now, to run gulp all you have to do is npm-run gulp.

You can even define the function with a shorter name instead of npm-run, like nr, or whatever your heart desires :)

Easy as pie!

Comments

[hkly]

Neat, I didn't know they added that! :)

[Thibault Maekelbergh]

I had this:

function npm-do {
  (PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH;
   eval $@;)
}

Seems very equal, is this considered safer or maybe yours is?

[hkly]

Hm, I don't actually know enough bash to know which is safer. Does anyone else know?