express-unpkg

express-unpkg is an express server that serves files from npm packages.

Installation

Using npm:

$ npm install --save express-unpkg

Then, use as you would anything else:

// using ES modules
import { createServer } from 'express-unpkg'

// using CommonJS modules
var createServer = require('express-unpkg').createServer

Configuration and Usage

Use createServer to create a server instance, passing it the options it needs to connect to npm:

import { createServer } from 'express-unpkg'

const server = createServer({
  registryURL: 'https://registry.npmjs.org',  // The URL of the npm registry, defaults to the public registry
  bowerBundle: '/bower.zip',                  // A special pathname for generating Bower bundles, defaults to "/bower.zip"
  redirectTTL: 60,                            // The time (in seconds) to cache 302 responses, defaults to 0
  autoIndex: true                             // Set false to disable generating index pages for directories
})

server.listen(8080)

server is a standard node HTTP server.

If you'd like to use express-unpkg as part of a larger express site, you can use the createRequestHandler function directly. As its name suggests, this function returns another function that can be used as the request handler in a standard express server. This function accepts the same options as createServer.

import express from 'express'
import { createRequestHandler } from 'express-unpkg'

const app = express()
app.use(express.static('public'))
app.use(createRequestHandler())

// ...

URL Format

In express-unpkg, the URL is the API. The server recognizes URLs in the format /package@version/path/to/file where:

package         The @scope/name of an npm package (scope is optional)
version         The version, version range, or tag
/path/to/file   The path to a file in that package (optional, defaults to main module)

Debugging

To enable debug console output, set DEBUG=express-unpkg in your environment.