simple-update-notifier

What is simple-update-notifier?

The simple-update-notifier package is designed to notify users of your Node.js application when a new version of the application is available. It is particularly useful for CLI tools where maintaining the latest version can be crucial for performance, security, or accessing new features.

What are simple-update-notifier's main functionalities?

Version Check and Notification

This feature automatically checks for updates against the npm registry based on the current package version and notifies the user if a newer version is available. The 'pkg' parameter should be the package.json of the application, which includes the version and name.

const simpleUpdateNotifier = require('simple-update-notifier');
simpleUpdateNotifier({pkg});

Other packages similar to simple-update-notifier

update-notifier

Similar to simple-update-notifier, update-notifier checks for available updates to npm packages and notifies the user. It provides more extensive configuration options, including custom messages, deferment of notification, and frequency of checks.

latest-version

While not providing direct user notifications, latest-version allows you to fetch the latest version of any npm package programmatically. This can be used to inform users of updates in a more customized manner compared to simple-update-notifier.

README

simple-update-notifier

Simple update notifier to check for npm updates for cli applications.

Checks for updates for an npm module and outputs to the command line if there is one available. The result is cached for the specified time so it doesn't check every time the app runs.

Install

npm install simple-update-notifier
OR
yarn add simple-update-notifier

Usage

import updateNotifier from 'simple-update-notifier';
import packageJson from './package.json' assert { type: 'json' };

updateNotifier({ pkg: packageJson });

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.

shouldNotifyInNpmScript

Type: boolean
Default: false

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

distTag

Type: string
Default: 'latest'

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

alwaysRun

Type: boolean
Default: false

When set, updateCheckInterval will not be respected and a check for an update will always be performed.

debug

Type: boolean
Default: false

When set, logs explaining the decision will be output to stderr whenever the module opts to not print an update notification

Changelog

1.1.0 (2022-11-24)

Add debug flag to simpleUpdateNotifier() (#15) Use stderr, not stdout, for notification (#16)