---
categories:
  - Programming Languages
tags:
  - backend
  - node-js
---

# Package management

## List installed packages

```bash
npm list
```

This will return a recursive tree that lists dependencies, dependences of dependencies, ... and so on.
To limit the depth you can add the `--depth=` flag. For example to see only your installed packages and their versions use `npm list --depth=0`.

## View `package.json` data for an installed package

We could go to the NPM registry and view details or we can quickly view the `package.json` for the dependency with the command `npm view [package_name]`

We can pinpoint specific dependencies in the `package.json`, e.g. `npm view [package_name] dependencies `

## View outdated modules

See whether your dependency version is out of date use `npm outdated`. This gives us a table, for example:

![Pasted image 20220411082627.png](/_img/Pasted_image_20220411082627.png)

- _Latest_ tells us the latest release available from the developers
- _Wanted_ tells us the version that our `package.json` rules target. To take the first dependency as an example. We must have set our SemVer syntax to `^0.4.x` since it is telling us that there is a minor release that is more recent than the one we have installed but is not advising that we update to the latest major release.
- _Current_ tells us which version we currently have installed regardless of the version that our `package.json` is targeting or the most recent version available.

## Updating

`npm update` only updates from _current_ to _wanted_. In other words it only updates in accordance with your caret and tilde rules applied to [semantic versioning](/Software_Engineering/Semantic_versioning.md).
