# Create a local NPM registry for testing

As a registry you can use whatever technology you prefer. Some examples are the NPM official registry (opens new window), Verdaccio (opens new window) or Nexus (opens new window)

For development purposes, let’s start a local Nexus repository and set it up as NPM registry

# Start local nexus as a docker container

Start by creating a volume to host all the data you will build in nexus. This is useful to save the content even if you will remove the docker container. You can follow two different approaches here: 1. You create a docker volume and mount it (that’s the sonatype recommanded approach) 2. You create a folder, change the modification to 777 and use that as a volume

By following the first approach, here are the commands you will need to issue in order to run Nexus as a docker container using the docker command

docker volume create --name nexus-data
docker run -d -p 8081:8081 --name nexus -v nexus-data:/nexus-data sonatype/nexus3

With the second approach, create a directory (e.g. nexus-data) and set the own to UID 200

mkdir nexus-data && chown -R 200:200 nexus-data
docker run -d -p 8081:8081 --name nexus -v "$(pwd)/nexus-data":/nexus-data sonatype/nexus3

Nexus should be available at your localhost at port 8081

Now you need to sign-in as an admin to configure Nexus and make it usable as a private npm repository. To do so, you need to get the admin credential from inside the container.

docker exec -it nexus cat /nexus-data/admin.password

Now you can use the password to access your private nexus instance as an admin and change the admin password to something easier for you to work with.

# Setup a private npm registry

NOTE: Nexus allows you to setup both a private registry and a proxy to an external registry. For development purposes, having only a private registry could make sense in order to retrieve only local modules and not modules available on remote registries, though feel free to setup also a proxy if you want to get access to npm modules outside of the private registry. Check out the documentation (opens new window) on nexus website for further details.

To setup a local repository: 1. Go to the Server administration and configuration page 2. Go to repositories 3. Create a new repository 4. Choose the npm (hosted) 5. Provide a name and save

NOTE: If you want you can also create a group repository to support search from multiple sources (local/proxies) at the same time.

# Setup npm-realm and user for publishing

In order to be able to login and publish into a repository you need to

  1. Create a role to enable user publishing 2. Create a user and assign roles to them 3. Enable the NPM realm to support npm adduser or npm login commands

# Create the role

  • Go to Security > Roles > Create role > Nexus Role

  • Choose a role ID and name

  • In the privileges, add the one required for publishing, e.g. nx-repository-view-npm-<your-repo>-*

  • Save

# Create the user

  • Go to Security > Users > Create local user

  • Add the relevant informations for your user, set the user Active and add the role you created in the previous step

# Enable npm realm to support npm adduser or npm login

  • Go to Security > Realms

  • Add the npm Bearer Token Realm to the active column

# Configure NPM

# Config npm to use the local repository

In order to use the private repository as default repository you need to configure npm accordingly (or use the --registry= option with all your commands)

npm config set registry http://localhost:8081/repository/<repo-name>/

Note A: The trailing slash at the end of the repository is required for the repository to work

Note B: This repository will be used for all the npm methods, so bare in mind that changing the global repository will potentially break other projects. If you want to avoid this, continue to use the --registry option.

# Login to the registry

You should be able to login to the registry using the login command

npm login --registry=http://localhost:8081/repository/<repo-name>/

# Good to go

You can now publish your own npm modules to the private registry using the publish command

npm publish --registry=http://localhost:8081/repository/<repo-name>/

# Set the publish repository at package.json level

In your npm module you can also add to the package.json an entry to make the private repository the default for publishing. Add this to your package.json file

  "publishConfig": {
    "registry": "http://localhost:8081/repository/<repo-name>/"
  }

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