update-notifier

Update notifier for your Node.js NPM package

Inform users of your package about updates in a non-intrusive way. Mainly targets global CLI apps.

Whenever you initiate the update notifier and it's not inside the interval threshold it will asynchronously check with NPM if there's an available update and then persist the result. The next time the notifier is initiated the result will be loaded into the .update property. Because of this it shoulddn't have any impact on your package startup performance. The check process is done with fork. This means that if you call process.exit, the check will still be performed in its own process.

Example usage

var updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');

// Checks for available update and returns an instance
var notifier = updateNotifier();

if (notifier.update) {
    // Notify using the built-in convenience method
    notifier.notify();
}

// `notifier.update` contains some useful info about the update
console.log(notifier.update);
/*
{
    latest: '0.9.5',
    current: '0.9.3',
    type: 'patch', // possible values: latest, major, minor, patch
    date: '2012-11-05T14:32:37.603Z',
    name: 'yeoman',
    error: null // contains any encountered error
}
*/

Example with settings and custom message

var notifier = updateNotifier({
    updateCheckInterval: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 // 1 week
});

if (notifier.update) {
    notifier.notify('Update available: ' + notifier.update.latest);
}

Documentation

updateNotifier([settings])

Checks if there are is an available update. Accepts some settings defined below. Returns an object with some update info if there is an available update, otherwise undefined.

updateNotifier.notify([message || defer])

A convenience method that will inform the user about an available update, see screenshot. By default it will display the message right away. However if you supply a custom message or true it will be displayed right before the process exits.

Settings

packagePath

Type: string
Default: 'package.json'

Relative path to your module package.json.

packageName

Type: string
Default: Inferred from packageFile

Used instead of inferring it from packageFile.
Requires you to also specify packageVersion.

packageVersion

Type: string
Default: Inferred from packageFile

Used instead of inferring it from packageFile.
Requires you to also specify packageName.

updateCheckInterval

Type: number
Default: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 (1 day)

How often it should check for updates.

updateCheckTimeout

Type: number
Default: 20000 (20 secs)

How long the update can take.
If it takes longer than the timeout, it will be aborted.

registryVersion

Type: string
Default: 'http://registry.npmjs.org/%s'

Alternative registry mirrors:

• http://85.10.209.91/%s
• http://165.225.128.50:8000/%s

User settings

Users of your module has the ability to opt-out of the update notifier by changing the optOut property to true in ~/.config/configstore/update-notifier-[your-module-name].yml. The path is available in notifier.config.path.

You could also let the user opt-out on a per run basis:

if (process.argv.indexOf('--no-update-notifier') === -1) {
    // run updateNotifier()
}

License

BSD license and copyright Google