Ender Package Util

A component of the Ender CLI, providing utilities for working with npm packages, including Ender-specific package.json files.

This package is used by the ender-repository to provide an interface to npm for the Ender CLI.

About Ender

For more information check out http://ender.jit.su

API

cleanName(name | names)

cleanName() will provide a plain package name given a package name with version and/or tag. So 'bean@0.4.5' becomes 'bean'. Can also operate on an array of names and will return an array of cleaned names.

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isPath(package)

isPath() returns a boolean when given a package name or path to a package to indicate whether this package is a path or a package in the repository.

isPath('bean')         // → false
isPath('bean@0.5.0')   // → false
isPath('/path/to/pkg') // → true
isPath('../foo')       // → true

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getPackageRoot(parents, package)

getPackageRoot() will return an absolute path to the installed 'package' given an array of its parent packages. This is mainly a utility to navigate through npm's node_modules directory structure.

getPackageRoot([], 'bean')
// → /absolute/path/to/node_modules/bean/
getPackageRoot([ 'foo', 'bar' ], 'baz')
// → /absolute/path/to/node_modules/foo/node_modules/bar/node_modules/baz/

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readPackageJSON(parents, package, callback)

readPackageJSON() uses getPackageRoot() to locate the package.json file for the given package and then return it modfied for use by Ender.

Given a standard package.json file, the following keys will be replaced if they exist in either the "ender" subkey, or the *"overlay"->"ender" sub-subkey:

• "name"
• "main"
• "bridge"
• "dependencies"
• "devDependencies"

This allows package owners to provide packages that differ when used in Node and in Ender.

For example, given a package.json:

{
  "name": "foo",
  "main": "foo.js",
  "ender": {
    "main": "bar.js",
    "bridge": "ender.js"
  }
}

You will actually end up with a structure that looks like this, once processed:

{
  "name": "foo",
  "main": "bar.js",
  "bridge": "ender.js"
}

The original, unmolested, deserialized package.json structure is available on the prototype of the returned object, e.g.:

readPackageJSON([], 'bean', function (err, packageJSON) {
  var original = Object.getPrototypeOf(packageJSON)
})

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getDependenciesFromJSON(packageDescriptor)

getDependenciesFromJSON() gets a simple array of dependency package names (not cleaned), from the package descriptor (package.json). It will always return an array, even if it's empty.

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getDependenciesFromDirectory(parents, package, callback)

getDependenciesFromDirectory() given a package and its parents (in an array, as in getPackageRoot()), find a list of dependencies in the node_modules directory.

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preparePackagesDirectory(callback)

preparePackagesDirectory() is a simple utility to set up node_modules if it doesn't already exist. It is necessary for the Ender CLI to make this directory under the current working directory, otherwise npm will search for a node_modules directory in the parent directories and use that instead.

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Contributing

Contributions are more than welcome! Just fork and submit a GitHub pull request! If you have changes that need to be synchronized across the various Ender CLI repositories then please make that clear in your pull requests.

Tests

Ender Package Util uses Buster for unit testing. You'll get it (and a bazillion unnecessary dependencies) when you npm install in your cloned local repository. Simply run npm test to run the test suite.

Licence

Ender Package Util is Copyright (c) 2012 @rvagg, @ded, @fat and other contributors. It is licenced under the MIT licence. All rights not explicitly granted in the MIT license are reserved. See the included LICENSE file for more details.