Tools - NPM

David Williamson @ Varilink Computing Ltd

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A Docker image that implements the npm package manager. Useful for deploying packages using npm into projects. To use this tool:

1. Install it into a project as a submodule.
2. Add the path to its docker-compose.yml file to the COMPOSE_FILE Docker Compose environment variable.
3. Extend the npm service that this tool defines to map the npm project directory within the Docker Compose project that is using this tool to /home/npm within the service container, using a volumes element.

Here is an example of a COMPOSE_FILE setting within a Docker Compose project's .env file that implements the second step above:

COMPOSE_FILE=docker-compose.yml:tools/npm/docker-compose.yml:tools/proxy/docker-compose.yml:tools/wordpress/docker-compose.yml

In this example, the project uses the Varilink npm, proxy and wordpress tools.

Here is an example of extending the npm service with a volumes element that implements the third step above:

npm:

  volumes:
    - ./wordpress:/home/npm

In this example, the npm project is at ./wordpress within the Docker Compose project that uses this tool.

Once you're all set up, you can do things like this:

docker-compose run --rm npm install bootstrap@4.5.3
docker-compose run --rm npm install sass --save-dev

To start installing packages into your npm project.

The package.json and package-lock.json files and the node_modules and .npm (npm cache) directories will all be created within the directory that you mapped using the volumes element as above. You should use .gitignore in your project to ignore the node_modules and .npm directories.

By default, all the files written back to the Docker host will be written using the UID 1000. If that's not the UID you require then you can override this value using the build element within your project's extension of the npm service; for example as follows:

npm:

  build:
    args:
      UID: 1001

  volumes:
    - ./wordpress:/home/npm

Of course, if the image has already been built and you override the default UID that is uses like this, then you must carry out an explicity build before running it again.

You can extend the npm service with an image element so that the built image can be referred to by name and so referenced in other Docker Compose services that you define in your project's docker-compose.yml file.

For example:

npm:

  image: varilink/npm

  volumes:
    - ./wordpress:/home/npm

sass:

  image: varilink/npm

  entrypoint: /node_modules/.bin/sass

  volumes:
    - ./wordpress/node_modules:/node_modules
    - ./wordpress/theme/assets/scss:/scss
    - ./wordpress/theme/assets/css:/css

This will expose the binary provied by the sass package as a Docker Compose service of the same name for generating CSS files from SCSS files.