Understanding package.json

npm is a widely used package management tool for front-end developers. In projects, package.json is used to manage the configuration of npm packages that the project depends on. package.json is a JSON file that not only describes the project’s package dependencies but also allows us to use “semantic versioning rules” to specify the versions of packages your project depends on, making your build better shareable with other developers and easier to reuse. This article mainly starts from recent practices, combined with the latest versions of npm and node, to introduce some common configurations in package.json and how to write a standardized package.json.

• package.json
• Commonly used properties in package.json
• Environment-related properties in package.json
• Dependency-related properties in package.json
• Third-party properties in package.json

I. package.json
1. Introduction to package.json
In node.js projects, package.json is the configuration file for managing dependencies. Usually, when we initialize a node.js project, we will do it through:

npm init

Then, in your directory, three directories/files will be generated: node_modules, package.json, and package.lock.json. The content of package.json is as follows:

{
    "name": "Your project name",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "Your project…