update-notifier-git

Update notifications for your CLI app

Inform users of your package of updates in a non-intrusive way.

• Install
• Usage
  • Simple
  • Comprehensive
  • Options and custom message
• How
• API
  • notifier = updateNotifier(options)
    • options.pkg
    • options.remoteUrl
    • options.updateCheckInterval
    • options.shouldNotifyInNpmScript
    • options.distTag
  • notifier.fetchInfo()
  • notifier.notify(options?)
    • options.defer
    • options.message
    • options.isGlobal
    • options.boxenOptions
  • User settings
• About

Install

npm install update-notifier-git --save

Usage

Simple

const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier-git');
const pkg = require('./package.json');
 
// either hardcode that here or retrieve it from packageJson.repository.url
const repo = 'https://github.com/JoernBerkefeld/update-notifier-git.git';
updateNotifier({
  pkg,
  remoteUrl: repo,
}).notify();

Comprehensive

const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier-git');
const pkg = require('./package.json');
// either hardcode that here or retrieve it from packageJson.repository.url
const repo = 'https://github.com/JoernBerkefeld/update-notifier-git.git';
 
// Checks for available update and returns an instance
const notifier = updateNotifier({
  pkg,
  remoteUrl: repo,
});
 
// Notify using the built-in convenience method
notifier.notify();
 
// `notifier.update` contains some useful info about the update
console.log(notifier.update);
/*
{
 latest: '1.0.1',
 current: '1.0.0',
 type: 'patch', // Possible values: latest, major, minor, patch, prerelease, build
 name: 'pageres'
}
*/

Options and custom message

const notifier = updateNotifier({
  pkg,
  updateCheckInterval: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7, // 1 week
});
 
if (notifier.update) {
  console.log(`Update available: ${notifier.update.latest}`);
}

How

Whenever you initiate the update notifier and it's not within the interval threshold, it will asynchronously check with npm in the background for available updates, then persist the result. The next time the notifier is initiated, the result will be loaded into the .update property. This prevents any impact on your package startup performance. The update check is done in a unref'ed child process. This means that if you call process.exit, the check will still be performed in its own process.

The first time the user runs your app, it will check for an update, and even if an update is available, it will wait the specified updateCheckInterval before notifying the user. This is done to not be annoying to the user, but might surprise you as an implementer if you're testing whether it works. Check out example.js to quickly test out update-notifier and see how you can test that it works in your app.

API

notifier = updateNotifier(options)

Checks if there is an available update. Accepts options defined below. Returns an instance with an .update property if there is an available update, otherwise undefined.

options.pkg

Type: object

options.pkg.name

Required
Type: string

options.pkg.version

Required
Type: string

options.remoteUrl

Type: String
Default: null

If your package is not published on NPM but instead only resides on a Git repo (e.g. GitHub, Gitlab, Bitbucket).

If you specify this parameter, NPM will not be checked but instead git is used to make a callout to your repo and retrieve version tags.

The info message to the user is also updated to show npm update <package name> instead of npm install <url> as that will not require you to specify the URL (like for npm install) but use the URL specified during the initial install, making things easier for your users.

options.updateCheckInterval

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

How often to check for updates.

options.shouldNotifyInNpmScript

Type: boolean
Default: false

Allows notification to be shown when running as an npm script.

options.distTag

Type: string
Default: 'latest'

Which dist-tag to use to find the latest version.

notifier.fetchInfo()

Check update information.

Returns an object with:

• latest (String) - Latest version.
• current (String) - Current version.
• type (String) - Type of current update. Possible values: latest, major, minor, patch, prerelease, build.
• name (String) - Package name.

notifier.notify(options?)

Convenience method to display a notification message. (See screenshot)

Only notifies if there is an update and the process is TTY.

options.defer

Type: boolean
Default: true

Defer showing the notification to after the process has exited.

options.message

Type: string
Default: See above screenshot

Message that will be shown when an update is available.

Available placeholders:

• {packageName} - Package name.
• {currentVersion} - Current version.
• {latestVersion} - Latest version.
• {updateCommand} - Update command.

notifier.notify({ message: 'Run `{updateCommand}` to update.' });
 
// Output:
// Run `npm install update-notifier-tester@1.0.0` to update.

options.isGlobal

Type: boolean
Default: Auto-detect

Include the -g argument in the default message's npm i recommendation. You may want to change this if your CLI package can be installed as a dependency of another project, and don't want to recommend a global installation. This option is ignored if you supply your own message (see above).

options.boxenOptions

Type: object
Default: {padding: 1, margin: 1, align: 'center', borderColor: 'yellow', borderStyle: 'round'} (See screenshot)

Options object that will be passed to boxen.

User settings

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

Users can also opt-out by setting the environment variable NO_UPDATE_NOTIFIER with any value or by using the --no-update-notifier flag on a per run basis.

The check is also skipped automatically:

• on CI
• in unit tests (when the NODE_ENV environment variable is test)

About

The idea for this module came from the desire to apply the browser update strategy to CLI tools, where everyone is always on the latest version. We first tried automatic updating, which we discovered wasn't popular.

This is the third iteration of that idea, this time adding full git support in parallel to npm packages.