How to Use npm Scripts as Your Build Tool”, an egghead.io course

An egghead.io course with lots of useful little tidbits I hadn’t become familiar with yet:

• npm will now load your PATH with your local node_modules folder, so you don’t have to specifically reference local modules anymore via the .bin folder
  • No more having to do:
    • "my-script" : "./node_modules/.bin/node-sass input.scss output.css"
  • Just reference it normally and it'll look in your local node_modules first
    • "my-script" : "node-sass input.scss output.css"
• You can pass arguments to a script using --
  • Compile your CSS
    • "css" : "node-sass src/styles.scss dist/styles.scss"
  • If you wanted to watch your CSS, you might do:
    • "css:watch" : "node-sass src/styles.scss dist/styles.scss" --watch
  • But then you have to sync changes between the two scripts. Instead you could just do:
    • "css:watch" : "npm run css -- --watch
• npm-run-all is a useful little package that’ll let you run all your npm scripts more succinctly
  • Say you have three scripts you want to run for linting using different tools
    • "lint:css" : "csslint --option path/to/file"
    • "lint:js" : "eslint --option path/to/file"
    • "lint:html" : "linter --option path/to/file"
  • Instead of doing:
    • "lint" : "npm run lint:css && npm run lint:js && npm run lint:html"
  • You can do fancy things like use globbing:
    • "lint" : "npm-run-all lint:*
  • For more info on all the neat little things it can do, checkout npm-run-all
• Use variables in your package.json by prefixing the variable name with $
  • "version" : "2.1.0" in package.json can be accessed in your scripts by doing $npm_package_version
  • To see variables available to you, do npm run env
  • This only works on Mac/linux. You'd have to install something like cross-var in order to have it work cross-platform.