npm vs. npx: What Developers Need to Know

npm’ and ‘npx’ are two important tools in the Node.js ecosystem that facilitate the management and execution of Javascript packages. While they are both related to nodejs, they serve a different purpose altogether.

npm is a couple of things. First and foremost, it is an online repository for the publishing of open-source Node.js projects.

Second, it is a CLI tool that aids you install those packages and manage their versions and dependencies. There are hundreds of thousands of Node.js libraries and applications on npm and many more are added every day.

npm by itself doesn’t run any packages. If you want to run a package using npm, you must specify that package in your package.json file.

1. Package Installation : ‘npm’ enables developers to install packages globally or locally within a project.

2. Dependency Management: ‘npm’ maintains a ‘package.json’ file in each project, documenting the project dependencies .

Since npm version 5.2.0 npx is pre bundled with npm. So it’s pretty much a standard nowadays.

npx is also a CLI tool whose purpose is to make it easy to install and manage dependencies hosted in the npm registry.

It’s now very easy to run any sort of Node.js based executable that you would normally install via npm.

You can run the following command to see if it is already installed for your current npm version:

‘npx’ is a tool that comes bundled with ‘npm’ (version > 5.2.0) and serves as an execution tool for Node.js packages. It is used for temporarily installing and executing packages without the need for global installation.

1. Package execution: ‘npx’ allows the execution of binaries from locally installed packages or globally installed. It automatically installs the packages and executes them.

2. Executing Commands: Besides executing packages it can also be used to run general commands.

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