update-notifier 
Update notifications for your CLI app
Inform users of your package of updates in a non-intrusive way.
Table of Contents
Examples
Simple example
var updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
var pkg = require('./package.json');
updateNotifier({pkg: pkg}).notify();Comprehensive example
var updateNotifier = require('update-notifier');
var pkg = require('./package.json');
// Checks for available update and returns an instance
var notifier = updateNotifier({pkg: pkg});
// Notify using the built-in convenience method
notifier.notify();
// `notifier.update` contains some useful info about the update
console.log(notifier.update);
/*
{
latest: '1.0.1',
current: '1.0.0',
type: 'patch', // possible values: latest, major, minor, patch, prerelease, build
name: 'pageres'
}
*/Example with settings and custom message
var notifier = updateNotifier({
pkg: pkg,
updateCheckInterval: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 // 1 week
});
console.log('Update available: ' + notifier.update.latest);How
Whenever you initiate the update notifier and it's not within the interval threshold, it will asynchronously check with npm in the background for available updates, then persist the result. The next time the notifier is initiated the result will be loaded into the .update property. This prevents any impact on your package startup performance.
The check process is done in a unref'ed child process. This means that if you call process.exit, the check will still be performed in its own process.
API
updateNotifier(options)
Checks if there is an available update. Accepts settings defined below. Returns an object with update info if there is an available update, otherwise undefined.
options
pkg
Type: object
name
Required
Type: string
version
Required
Type: string
updateCheckInterval
Type: number
Default: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 (1 day)
How often to check for updates.
callback(error, update)
Type: function
Passing a callback here will make it check for an update directly and report right away. Not recommended as you won't get the benefits explained in How.
update is equal to notifier.update
updateNotifier.notify([options])
Convenience method to display a notification message (see screenshot).
Only notifies if there is an update and the process is TTY.
options.defer
Type: boolean
Default: true
Defer showing the notication to after the process has exited.
User settings
Users of your module have the ability to opt-out of the update notifier by changing the optOut property to true in ~/.config/configstore/update-notifier-[your-module-name].yml. The path is available in notifier.config.path.
Users can also opt-out by setting the environment variable NO_UPDATE_NOTIFIER with any value or by using the --no-update-notifier flag on a per run basis.
About
The idea for this module came from the desire to apply the browser update strategy to CLI tools, where everyone is always on the latest version. We first tried automatic updating, which we discovered wasn't popular. This is the second iteration of that idea, but limited to just update notifications.
There are a bunch projects using it:
Yeoman - modern workflows for modern webapps
Bower - a package manager for the web
Pageres - responsive website screenshots
Node GH - GitHub command line tool
Hoodie CLI - Hoodie command line tool
Roots - a toolkit for advanced front-end development
License
BSD license and copyright Google