All npm packages have a name. Some package names also have a scope. A scope follows the usual rules for package names (url-safe characters, no leading dots or underscores). When used in package names, preceded by an @-symbol and followed by a slash, e.g.
@somescope/somepackagename
Scopes are a way of grouping related packages together, and also affect a few things about the way npm treats the package.
Scoped packages are supported by the public npm registry. The npm client is backwards-compatible with un-scoped registries, so it can be used to work with scoped and un-scoped registries at the same time.
Scoped packages are installed to a sub-folder of the regular installation
folder, e.g. if your other packages are installed in node_modules/packagename,
scoped modules will be in node_modules/@myorg/packagename. The scope folder
(@myorg) is simply the name of the scope preceded by an @-symbol, and can
contain any number of scoped packages.
A scoped package is installed by referencing it by name, preceded by an
@-symbol, in npm install:
npm install @myorg/mypackage
Or in package.json:
"dependencies": {
"@myorg/mypackage": "^1.3.0"
}
Note that if the @-symbol is omitted in either case npm will instead attempt to
install from GitHub; see npm-install.
Because scoped packages are installed into a scope folder, you have to include the name of the scope when requiring them in your code, e.g.
require('@myorg/mypackage')
There is nothing special about the way Node treats scope folders, this is
just specifying to require the module mypackage in the folder called @myorg.
Scoped packages can be published to any registry that supports them, including the public npm registry.
(As of 2015-04-19, the public npm registry does support scoped packages)
If you wish, you may associate a scope with a registry; see below.
To publish a public scoped package, you must specify --access public with
the initial publication. This will publish the package and set access
to public as if you had run npm access public after publishing.
To publish a private scoped package to the npm registry, you must have an npm Private Modules account.
You can then publish the module with npm publish or npm publish --access restricted, and it will be present in the npm registry, with
restricted access. You can then change the access permissions, if
desired, with npm access or on the npmjs.com website.
Scopes can be associated with a separate registry. This allows you to seamlessly use a mix of packages from the public npm registry and one or more private registries, such as npm Enterprise.
You can associate a scope with a registry at login, e.g.
npm login --registry=http://reg.example.com --scope=@myco
Scopes have a many-to-one relationship with registries: one registry can host multiple scopes, but a scope only ever points to one registry.
You can also associate a scope with a registry using npm config:
npm config set @myco:registry http://reg.example.com
Once a scope is associated with a registry, any npm install for a package
with that scope will request packages from that registry instead. Any
npm publish for a package name that contains the scope will be published to
that registry instead.
Last modified January 08, 2016 Found a typo? Send a pull request!