Hosting NPM packages on GitHub

Resources

Create an Access Token on GitHub

On GitHub, head to Settings > Developer > Personal Access Tokens and create a new one with:

Copy the token and add it to ~/.npmrc with the value //npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=add-token-here.

Now log into the registry:

$ npm login --registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
> Username: YOU_GITHUB_USERNAME
> Password: YOUR_GITHUB_TOKEN
> Email: PUBLIC-EMAIL-ADDRESS
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Publishing the first package

Head to the hello-world-npm repo and fork it into your own GitHub account.

Once forked, let's clone it into your local. That should be git clone https://github.com/your-username/hello-world-npm.git.

Change into that directory and open it up into an editor. We want to make some changes to package.json:

{
  "name": "@your-username/hello-world-npm",
  "version": "1.0.2",
  "description": "A simple npm package to demonstrate GitHub Package Registry",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "git+https://github.com/your-username/hello-world-npm.git"
  },
  "author": "Your name",
  "license": "ISC",
  "bugs": {
    "url": "https://github.com/your-username/hello-world-npm/issues"
  },
  "homepage": "https://github.com/your-username/hello-world-npm#readme",
  "publishConfig": {
    "registry": "https://npm.pkg.github.com/"
  }
}
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Save and let's commit this and push back up.

git add package.json
git commit -m "feat: Updating package details"
git push
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Finally, let's publish the package!

npm publish
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Bingo! We should be ready to roll.

Installing the package

Let's start a new Nodejs project.

mkdir hello-first-pkg
cd hello-first-pkg
# init with basic details
yarn init -y
touch index.js .npmrc
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We need to add @your-username:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com to the .npmrc file to tell it to look for your packages.

Then run nnpm i @your-username/hello-world-npm.

This should successfully install. Once happy, let's test it out! Add the following inside index.js:

const myPackage = require('@your-username/hello-world-npm');
myPackage.helloWorld();
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We are now all set to try it out! Run node index.js and we'll get our glorious response!

> node index.js
Hello World!
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The important part from all of this is to ensure that you have correctly configured package.json for your NPM packages.