Update notifications for your CLI app
Inform users of your package of updates in a non-intrusive way.
const updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
const pkg = require('./package.json');
updateNotifier({pkg}).notify();
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'
}
*/
const notifier = updateNotifier({
pkg,
updateCheckInterval: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 // 1 week
});
console.log(`Update available: ${notifier.update.latest}`);
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 check process 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.
Checks if there is an available update. Accepts settings defined below. Returns an object with update info if there is an available update, otherwise undefined
.
Type: object
Required
Type: string
Required
Type: string
Type: number
Default: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 (1 day)
How often to check for updates.
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
Convenience method to display a notification message (see screenshot).
Only notifies if there is an update and the process is TTY.
Type: boolean
Default: true
Defer showing the notification to after the process has exited.
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].yml
. 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 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.
There are a bunch projects using it:
- 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
- Bower - A package manager for the web
- Hoodie CLI - Hoodie command line tool
- Roots - A toolkit for advanced front-end development
BSD license and copyright Google