extracting details from package.json

2020-07-08

~1 min read

189 words

Yesterday, when I was writing about using Node to create ASCII art, there was a detail I overlooked - the version number.

As a reminder, the asciiGreeting method is:

lib/classes/CLIs.js

asciiGreeting() {
    let art = '';
    art = `${art} _______                             __${os.EOL}`;
    art = `${art}|   _   .-----.----.--.--.-----.----|  .-----.-----.-----.${os.EOL}`;
    art = `${art}|   |___|  -__|   _|  |  |  -__|   _|  |  -__|__ --|__ --|${os.EOL}`;
    art = `${art}|____   |_____|__|  \\___/|_____|__| |__|_____|_____|_____|${os.EOL}`;
    art = `${art}|   |   |             The Serverless Application Framework${os.EOL}`;
    art = `${art}|       |                           serverless.com, v${version}${os.EOL}`;
    art = `${art} -------'`;

    this.consoleLog(chalk.yellow(art));
    this.consoleLog('');
  }

In one of the last lines they reference version — but where does that come from? It’s not an argument to the function, but rather, it’s imported as a global variable in the module… from the package.json.

lib/classes/CLIs.js

const version = require('../../package.json').version;

/*...*/

asciiGreeting(){/*...*/}

That was what I found so interesting and while I haven’t thought of many use cases for it (perhaps printing out available scripts or the package dependencies from the CLI rather than requiring a user to dive into the source code — particularly if it’s not open), it’s interesting to remember that it’s possible!

Hi there and thanks for reading! My name's Stephen. I live in Chicago with my wife, Kate, and dog, Finn. Want more? See about and get in touch!