update-notifier 
Update notifications for your CLI app
Inform users of your package of updates in a non-intrusive way.
Contents
Install
$ npm install update-notifier
Usage
Simple
const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
const pkg = require('./package.json');
updateNotifier({pkg}).notify();
Comprehensive
const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
const pkg = require('./package.json');
// Checks for available update and returns an instance
const notifier = updateNotifier({pkg});
// 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 there is an available update, otherwise undefined.
options
pkg
Type: Object
name
Required
Type: string
version
Required
Type: string
updateCheckInterval
Type: number
Default: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 (1 day)
How often to check for updates.
callback(error, update)
Type: Function
Passing a callback here will make it check for an update directly and report right away. Not recommended as you won't get the benefits explained in How. update is equal to notifier.update.
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
Type: Object
defer
Type: boolean
Default: true
Defer showing the notification to after the process has exited.
message
Type: string
Default: See above screenshot
Message that will be shown when an update is available.
isGlobal
Type: boolean
Default: true
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).
boxenOpts
Type: Object
Default: {padding: 1, margin: 1, align: 'center', borderColor: 'yellow', borderStyle: 'round'} (See screenshot)
Options object that will be passed to boxen.
shouldNotifyInNpmScript
Type: boolean
Default: false
Allows notification to be shown when running as an npm script.
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 on CI automatically.
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 second iteration of that idea, but limited to just update notifications.
Users
There are a bunch projects using it:
- npm - Package manager for JavaScript
- Yeoman - Modern workflows for modern webapps
- AVA - Simple concurrent test runner
- XO - JavaScript happiness style linter
- Pageres - Capture website screenshots
- Node GH - GitHub command line tool
License
BSD-2-Clause © Google