npm-detect

An npm package for walking a project directory (tree of files) and determining which npm packages are depended on by the project files. It will also generate a sample dependencies section suited for inclusion in the project's package.json file (see npm help json for details).

The implementation is very naive, but should work for most cases:

1. Walk the directory tree, looking for *.js files.
2. Look for require() statements that match the pattern for npm package names.
3. Query the npm registry for matching package names.

Installation and Usage

Install via npm:

sudo npm install detect

Run it (example is npm-detect being run on itself):

$ cd /your/project/dir
$ npm-detect
Scanning directory /your/project/dir... 
  ./bin/detect.js
  ./lib/tree-walk.js
Finished scanning, checking 6 packages against npm registry (be patient)...
  path...
  fs...
  child_process...
  util...
  npm... ✓
  step... ✓
Finished, 2 npm packages found: 
  npm
  step
Sample package.json dependencies section:
{
  "other package.json sections": "go here",
  "dependencies": {
    "npm": "*",
    "step": "*"
  }
}

To-Do

• allow passing a path to search (defaults to '.'), probably as first argument
• make sure all legal npm package names are covered by the regexes (currently letters, numbers, hyphen, underscore, dot)
• add package version numbers to sample package.json output; use tilde version specifier with latest version from npm search output
• help output and man page

Contact

Problems, comments, and pull requests all welcome. Find me on GitHub.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2011 Todd Eichel. Released under the MIT License.