Modern Full-Stack Development

 NPM: More on package.json
In the last chapter, you learned how to init a project with NPM, which generates a 
package.json file. I said then that most of its contents were optional, and that’s definitely 
true, but let’s talk about what’s available in that file, discussing each of the keys available 
(remember it’s just a JSON file, which means it’s defining a JavaScript object, which has 
keys or properties or attributes or even elements – all these terms are generally taken to be 
interchangeable in this context):
• 
name – We start with a simple one: the name of the thing you’re 
coding! The name element’s value must be no more than 214 
characters, cannot start with a dot or an underscore, can have no 
uppercase letters, and must be URL-safe.
• 
author – The author is a single person and is defined by an object 
with three potential attributes: name, email, and url (where name is 
required, and both email and url are optional). Alternatively, you 
can make the value a single string in the form "  
()" and NPM will parse it for you automatically.

---

22
• 
bin – Some packages require executables to be installed to do their 
work and added to the path. That’s where the bin element comes 
in. You can make the value an object (or map, which is probably the 
more appropriate term here) that maps a command to an executable 
and NPM will take care of “installing” it for you when you install the 
package by creating the appropriate symlink.
• 
browser – Some modules are meant to be used in a browser, not in 
Node, and for those packages, you can use this element instead of 
the main element (coming up shortly!) to hint to the users of your 
package that it depends on primitives available to JavaScript that 
aren’t available in Node.
• 
bugs – If your project has an issue tracker, then you can reference 
it with the bugs element. The value of this is an object with two 
attributes, url and email, and you can specify either or both (but you 
must specify at least one, or NPM will complain).
•