Introduction

In recent days, almost every project depends on some other libraries/packages to speed up their development and to use the functionality of those libraries/packages. To get these packages, we use npm. The npm packages must be locally installed and correctly versionend. But most of the time, developers get confused which command to use when dealing with these.

What are npm & npx commands and what are they used for?

The command npm is used to download JavaScript packages from Node Package Manager, and npx is used to execute the JavaScript packages downloaded this way.

When we install packages via npm, those packages can be installed globally, but this is not the default behaviour. It means all the packages will be downloaded in a subdirectory (named “node_modules”) of the current working directory (means packages will be installed locally within that directory).

How to install a package using npm?

If we need to install a package globally then we need to provide argument -g with the command, like:

$ npm install -g package_name

Now, when executables are installed via npm package, npm create links to those on below paths:

• locally installed packages will have executable links created at ./node_modules/.bin/ directory.
• globally installed packages will have links created from the global bin/ directory (for example: /usr/local/bin on Linux or at %AppData%/npm on Windows). For locally installed packages, if we need to execute a package with npm, either we have to type the local path like this:
  $ ./node_modules/.bin/package-name

Or we need to specify this package in the script section of our project’s package.json file like this:

And then we can run the script using npm run:

$ npm run package-name

How and when to use npx?

npx is an npm package used to execute any package on the npm registry directly without installing it. npx helps us avoid versioning, dependency issues and installing unnecessary packages that we just want to try out.

If we need to execute a package then we need to take some additional steps and that’s where npx comes into picture.

Note: npx comes bundled with npm version 5.2+

If we want to execute a locally installed package, all we need to do is type:

$ npx package-name

npx will check whether package-name exists in $PATH, or in the local project binaries, and if so it will execute it. Most of the time, we need to run the npx package-name command only once related to one package in a project. It also allows developers to execute any Package without even downloading that in node_modules. For example, if we run below command then it will display the result without downloading that package in our node_modules:

$ npx cowsay wow

Conclusion

npm and npx are powerful tools that can help you manage your JavaScript projects more efficiently, and understanding when and how to use each one can help you become a more efficient developer. So in short, npm is a tool that is used to install packages and npx is a tool that is used to execute packages.

Hope this blog helps you understand npm and npx better. Please feel free to contact us in case of any queries and our team of experts will be happy to help.