How to install a private NPM module without my own

Question

I've taken some shared code and put it in an NPM module, one I don't want to upload to the central registry. The question is, how do I install it from other projects?

The obvious way is probably to set up my own NPM registry, but according to the documentation, that involves a lot of hassle.

Can I just install an NPM module that sits on the local filesystem, or perhaps even from git?

npm install --from-git git@server:project

Answer 1

I had this same problem, and after some searching around, I found Reggie (https://github.com/mbrevoort/node-reggie). It looks pretty solid. It allows for lightweight publishing of NPM modules to private servers. Not perfect (no authentication upon installation), and it's still really young, but I tested it locally, and it seems to do what it says it should do.

That is... (and this just from their docs)

npm install -g reggie
reggie-server -d ~/.reggie

then cd into your module directory and...

reggie -u http://<host:port> publish 
reggie -u http://127.0.0.1:8080 publish 

finally, you can install packages from reggie just by using that url either in a direct npm install command, or from within a package.json... like so

npm install http://<host:port>/package/<name>/<version>
npm install http://<host:port>/package/foo/1.0.0

or..

dependencies: {
    "foo": "http://<host:port>/package/foo/1.0.0"
}

Answer 2

Structure your code in an accessible fashion like below. If this is possible for you.

• NodeProjs\Apps\MainApp\package.json

• NodeProjs\Modules\DataModule\package.json

Within MainApp @ NodProjs\Apps\MainApp\

npm install --S ../../Modules/DataModule

You may need to update package.json as:

 "dependencies": {
       "datamodule": "../../Modules/DataModule"
}

This worked for my situation.

Answer 3

Starting with arcseldon's answer, I found that the team name was needed in the URL like so:

npm install --save "git+https://myteamname@[e-mail]/myteamname/myprivate.git"

And note that the API key is only available for the team, not individual users.

Answer 4

In your private npm modules add

"private": true 

to your package.json

Then to reference the private module in another module, use this in your package.json

{
    "name": "myapp",
    "dependencies": {
        "private-repo": "git+ssh://[e-mail]:myaccount/myprivate.git#v1.0.0",
    }
}

Answer 5

Update January 2016

In addition to other answers, there is sometimes the scenario where you wish to have private modules available in a team context.

Both Github and Bitbucket support the concept of generating a team API Key. This API key can be used as the password to perform API requests as this team.

In your private npm modules add

"private": true 

to your package.json

Then to reference the private module in another module, use this in your package.json

    {
        "name": "myapp",
        "dependencies": {
            "private-repo":
"git+https://myteamname:[e-mail]/myprivate.git",
        }
    }

where team name = myteamname, and API Key = aQqtcplwFzlumj0mIDdRGCbsAq5d6Xg4

Here I reference a bitbucket repo, but it is almost identical using github too.

Finally, as an alternative, if you really don't mind paying $7 per month (as of writing) then you can now have private NPM modules out of the box.

Answer 6

cd somedir
npm install .

or

npm install path/to/somedir

somedir must contain the package.json inside it.

It knows about git too:

npm install git://github.com/visionmedia/express.git