Pkgparse -- a small NPM searching module

Here's the basics of how to use my tiny project:

Installing

Assuming you have Node installed, plug the following into your terminal to install it globally. This will allow you to run the program anywhere on your system.

npm install pkgparse -g

What does it do?

• You can search for an NPM module by name and receive back a super brief overview of what it does.

• You can search for a module and receive back a list of the dependencies that it relies on.

• You can feed it a package.json file and it will parse it, returning brief descriptions of each valid dependency.

• You can enter a package name to have pkgparse open its npm page in your favourite browser (or specify one!)

How do you use it?

Parsing a package.json file

You can use -f to fetch the package.json file in your current working directory.

pkgparse -f

Alternatively, you can feed in a package.json file from anywhere on your computer like so

pkgparse -f "~/Development/0050_pkgparse/package.json"

The output of -f would look similar to the following:

Parsing package from /Users/Sentry/Development/0050_pkgparse/package.json

↳ promise => Bare bones Promises/A+ implementation
↳ commander => the complete solution for node.js command-line programs
↳ superagent-promise => superagent promise wrapper
↳ superagent => elegant & feature rich browser / node HTTP with a fluent API
↳ chalk => Terminal string styling done right. Much color.

Just a note: Entering ~ as a substitute for your root directory doesn't work 'out of the box' with Node so what it does is swap out ~ for whatever your process.env.HOME variable is: On OS X for example, this would be /Users/username/

Searching for a specific module

You can use -s followed by the name of a module to return a brief overview on what it does.

pkgparse -s express

The resulting output would look like this:

↳ express => Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework

Searching for the dependencies of a module

Just slap -d followed by the name of a module like so:

pkgparse -d tape

What would that look like you ask? Check this out:

tape
----
Dependencies
↳ deep-equal
↳ defined
↳ function-bind
↳ glob
↳ has
↳ inherits
↳ minimist
↳ object-inspect
↳ resolve
↳ resumer
↳ string.prototype.trim
↳ through

Dev Dependencies
↳ concat-stream
↳ falafel
↳ js-yaml
↳ tap
↳ tap-parser

Open the NPM page of a module

pkgparse -o chalk

Running the command by itself will open, in this case http://npmjs.org/package/chalk, in your default browser

But how can I open a page in a specific browser?!?"

pkgparse -o firefox

Thought I'd forget, didn't you? The above case uses firefox but you can swap it out for any browser. Well, you can actually use any application you like but I won't be responsible if your favourite website won't open in VLC or causes a meltdown when you try to open it with Spotify.

Case sensitivity doesn't matter much but multi-word names like Google Chrome MUST be entered in quotes!

If you don't, pkgparse will interpret Google and Chrome as two separate arguments resulting in nothing happening (until I add some sort of feedback/error string)

Why?

Learning! I wanted to figure out how to write a super basic CLI application using Javascript. It's a neat tool to hack away at here and there but don't expect super clean code from a pro or anything. Personally, I like using it so perhaps you might find it useful too!

What is this Node thing? Where am I? What is an NPM?

Here's what you're looking for: https://nodejs.org/en/

Feedback / Feature Requests

If you'd like to suggest a feature or report a bunch, feel free to add it via Github or fire a tweet to @ethernetsalad.