Software tools written in Node.js

How to use npm/yarn/Node.js package.json scripts as your build tool

(September 1, 2020) To Node.js the package.json simply tracks a few things about a package like its main module. To npm and yarn this file serves more purposes, from package management data, to dependencies lists, to package installation and project management scripts. The scripts tag may have a humble originating purpose, but by overusing it package.json becomes powerful platform for running command-line software processes like building websites or building software products.

Resizing images using Node.js image processing tools, without external dependencies or image servers

(September 18, 2019) While getting ready to post a set of images on another blog, I wondered how to most effectively resize the images. They were high resolution product images that came with a press release, and to be nice to my readers it's important to shrink the image size to promote faster downloads. What if I want to supply several image sizes based on the device used by the visitor? It's not enough to resize the image on my own, it would be better to generate several image sizes. Which led to exploring Node.js tools for resizing images, and finding them lacking.

Simplify your npm publish workflow using Github Actions

(September 12, 2019) Github's recently added new feature, Github Actions, promises us a powerful Workflow system to handle a huge range of tasks. Those of us who publish Node.js packages can use Actions to automatically run tests and then publish the package to npm. Let us see how to use Github Actions to simplify our lives.

How to install NAVE, an alternative Node.js version manager to nvm

(July 25, 2019) Those of us wanting to keep up with the latest Node.js version, or to test our code on alternative Node.js versions, probably have installed nvm. It is an easy-to-use tool for quickly installing the latest Node.js version, or to easily switch between Node.js versions to test our code. But nvm doesn't fit all use cases, and that's where nave comes in. Its purpose is extremely similar to nvm, but it satisfies a slightly different set of use cases that one may find interesting.

Automating Node.js/JavaScript code quality checks with eslint

(Wed Dec 20 2017 16:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time))

With eslint, coders can save a lot of time (in theory) by checking code for simple (but hard to find) errors. Take a function where you typed one parameter name, and used a different name, and then your unit testing did not touch that function. You'll find that error after a customer reports a bug. With eslint such an error can be caught before shipping the code.

Yarn versus npm, what's the big deal?

(Tue Sep 19 2017 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)) A couple years ago Yarn came onto the Node.js scene promising to be a better npm than npm. Apparently a lot of people have taken to Yarn, given the frequency with which I see instructions to install packages using Yarn. Since npm is installed along with Node.js, and since Yarn just uses the npm package repository, I'm left wondering what all the fuss is about Yarn. If it's just doing the same thing as npm then what is its reason to exist? What advantage does Yarn have over npm? Let's take a look.