Syntax#

• The “scripts” property in package.json allows you to run npm packages locally.
• The "karma": "karma" script references the karma shell script is the node_modules/.bin directory. This reference needs to be grab and an alias needs to be applied to it in order to be used in other npm scripts, such as "test": "karma start".

Remarks#

Pre-recognized scripts

• prepublish: Run before the package is published
• publish, postpublish: Run after the package is published
• preinstall: Run before the package is installed
• install, postinstall: Run after the package is installed
• preversion, version: Run before bump the package version
• postversion: Run after bump the package version
• pretest, test, posttest: Run by the npm test command
• prestop, stop, poststop: Run by the npm stop command
• prestart, start, poststart: Run by the npm start command
• prerestart, restart, postrestart: Run by the npm restart command. Note: npm restart will run the stop and start scripts if no restart script is provided.

It can be deduced that the "scripts" property in package.json is a very powerful tool. It can be used as a build tool, similar to the likes of Grunt and Gulp, but with over 250,000 packages available. NPM scripts runs npm packages installed locally to your project from the node_modules/.bin directory.

Running karma locally

package.json snippet

{
    "scripts":
        "test": "karma start",
        "karma": "karma"
    }
}

Running npm scripts

There are two types of npm scripts, and the command to run each is slightly different. The first type of npm scripts are “pre-recognized” scripts. These scripts are automatically recognized by npm and don’t need a special prefix (as you will see for the other type) to run them. The other type of scripts are “custom” scripts. These scripts aren’t pre-recognized by npm and have to be prefixed by a special command to run them. There are a list of pre-recognized scripts in the remarks section.

To run pre-recognized scripts:

npm start or npm test

To run custom scripts you need to use the run command:

npm run karma

What npm scripts are and how are they triggered

The npm scripts are commands that npm will run for you when called with the proper arguments. The power and sense of this is to NOT install the npm packages globally poluting your environment.

The difference between pre-recognized and custom scripts relies on the run word between the tags, custom scripts will need the run between npm and the script name

Based on this we can differenciate and create different tasks or scripts to be run with npm.

Given the following example on the package.json file:

{
  "name": "MyApp",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "app.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "mocha --recursive ./tests/",
    "test:watch": "npm run test -- -w",
    "start": "nodemon --inspect ./app.js",
    "build": "rm -rf ./dist/ && gulp build"
  }
...
}

We can see different tasks to be run:

• npm test Would work fine as it is a pre-recognized script

• npm run test Would work fine as it is a valid way to execute a npm script

• npm run test:watch Would work also, and it’s calling npm run test inside itself

• npm run build Would before running gulp build delete the dist folder that is in the directory (assuming you are in Linux or the command rm is recognized)