Better `npm outdated` command

by Eric Fortis

Let’s make the npm outdated command more useful. For example, the original output is something like this: 

Package  Current  Wanted  Latest  Location          Depended by
foo      1.0.0    1.0.0   1.2.0   node_modules/foo  my_app
bar      1.0.0    1.0.0   2.0.0   node_modules/bar  my_app

So for updating foo, we have to type: 

npm install foo@1.2.0

On the other hand, we can make it print something like that right away, so we can paste it. For example: 

npm install foo@1.2.0   ;# foo@1.0.0
npm install bar@2.0.0   ;# bar@1.0.0

The comment at the right shows the currently installed version, which is going to be handy for knowing if there are expected breaking changes, such as in the bar package.

Command

Add this NPM script to your package.json: 

"scripts": {
  "outdated": "npm outdated --parseable | awk -F: '{ printf \"npm i %s ;# %s\\n\", $4, $2 }'"
}

…and run it with npm run outdated

How to check outdated NPM dependencies in many projects in parallel?

This script is similar, but it inspects many projects concurrently. For example: 

cd $REPO/AppSPA     && npm i foo@1.2.0     ;# foo@1.0.0
cd $REPO/AccountSPA && npm i baz@1.9.0     ;# baz@1.1.0

Shell Script

#!/bin/sh

apps="
AppSPA
AccountSPA
ServerSide
"

npmo() {
  local pids=""
  for app in $apps; do
    cd $REPO/$app
    npm outdated --parseable |\
      awk -v app="$app" -F: \
      '{ printf "cd $REPO/%-10s && npm i %-20s ;# %s\n", app, $4, $2 }' &
    pids="$pids $!"
  done
  wait $pids
}

npmo | sort -k6

Opening the repo’s homepage

Similarly, for seeing the changelogs, for example on a GitHub repository, replace the last line with: 

npmo | sort -k6 |\
  tee /dev/tty |\
  awk '{print $6}' | uniq | xargs npm repo

Open Source

This script is more complete.

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