How to Node

Starting a new project from scratch

• mkdir and cd into project directory
• run npm init to create package.json (can also use npm init -y to answer yes to all prompts)
• install needed packages with npm install <package name>
• create a .gitignore file and add node_modules to it
• make sure that node_modules is not being tracked by git

Cloning a repo that uses node packages

• Clone down the repo that you want to work with and cd into the new directory
• There should be a file called pacakge.json that contains a list of "dependencies" which are node packages the repo used
• By going into our terminal and using the command npm install in the directory of the repo, we can download all the neccessary packages to our local repo
• npm is able to look at the package.json file and read the list of dependencies to install exactlly what the repo used and needs

Building your own module (slightly misunderstood prompt)

• First, create a .js file which will contain the code for our module
• Write the code we want to export using the object module.exports

    // examples
    module.exports.myFunction = () => console.log("Fetch is not happening")

    module.exports.someNumbers = [39, 2, 56]

• Import the module into another .js file using the require() function which takes the file path of the module we want as an argument

    // example
    const myModule = require('./myModule.js)

    myModule.myFunction()

• We can use any code contained in the module by using dot notation