This is the code that runs www.npmjs.org.

Getting Started

First, clone this repo.

If you have a reasonably new machine, we strongly recommend using Virtualbox and Vagrant to run a pre-configured VM containing couchdb, redis, and elasticsearch, all ready to go. If your machine struggles to run a VM, or you are suspicious of VMs, you will need to install them yourself.

1a. Recommended setup: pre-built VM

First install VirtualBox, which is free for personal use.

Then install Vagrant, also free.

Now go into the root of the repo and run

vagrant up

this will download the VM image (~700MB, so go grab a cup of coffee) and start the VM. After this first run, the VM image will already be available on your machine, so vagrant up will only take a few seconds.

Now get access to the machine, super simple:

vagrant ssh

You are now inside the VM! The code in the repo is linked to /vagrant, the directory you find yourself in when you login. Changes made outside the VM will be immediately reflected inside of it and vice versa.

1b. Old way: install servers locally

You need to install couchdb, redis, and elasticsearch. On OS X, these are available via homebrew.

All servers should be available and not running. npm-www will run them itself with the correct configurations; you just need them to be available in the path, such that the commands elasticsearch, couchdb and redis-server all hit the right binaries.

2. npm install

Note that you should be inside the VM and at /vagrant when you do this:

npm install

Most of the dependencies are checked-in, but a few will get installed when you run this.

3. Start the server

Again, from inside the VM at /vagrant, run

npm run dev

You should see couch, redis and elasticsearch all being started. This can take a little while, so wait until you see "STARTING DEV SITE NOW". Once it's running, you can see the site by going to

https://localhost:15443/

That's it! You are good to go. You can edit the code from outside the VM and the changes will be reflected in the VM. When you're done, remember to exit the vm and run

vagrant suspend

which will save the VM. vagrant up will bring it back much faster after the first run.

3b. Running the databases and www separately

If you are making front-end changes to the website, you will soon find that waiting 60 seconds for the website and all the databases to restart every time you make a change to the templates is incredibly tedious. Luckily, there's a way to avoid that. SSH into the VM in two separate terminals, and run

npm run dev-db

in one terminal. This will launch couch, redis and elasticsearch. Then run

npm run dev-www

This will run only the web worker. You can then make changes to templates and restart this worker without having to touch the other one, which makes the whole thing a lot faster and less painful.

Under the hood

All the npm run commands are simply running the script dev/go.js with different arguments. They dump redis and couchdb logs to stdio, and automatically run the server logs (which are just JSON) into bunyan, which parses and prints them neatly.

The couchdb clones 1/256th of the published packages, and comes with a hard-coded set of user accounts for testing. It has a user named 'admin' with the password 'admin', which you can use to log in and do stuff using futon, by going here:

http://localhost:15984/_utils/

It is also running a copy of Elasticsearch, which you can hit locally if you want to test queries or perform admin:

http://localhost:9200/

If you want to run www as if it were in production instead, you need to copy config.admin.example.js to config.admin.js, fill in the appropriate fields, and then npm start

Where's the code

Data fetcher thingies are in models. They're all defined in models.js.

Define new URL handlers in the routes folder. They're defined on router.js.

The templates are all in templates. They are EJS.

Static assets are in the static folder. The main CSS is generated using stylus, and it is in the stylus folder.

Design Philosophy

• No frameworks

  Everything is done using small, simple, standalone modules that work with vanilla Node.js http servers.

• No lib folder

  If you would put it in lib/, then it belongs in a separate module.

• JavaScript, EJS, and Stylus

  We are using JavaScript because that is the language Node.js runs.

  We are using EJS for templating, because that is the template language that is closest to HTML.

  We are using Stylus for styling, because CSS is intolerable, and stylus is a reasonable superset that adds useful features in a way that makes it very clear what the resulting CSS will be.

• Showcase new Node.js Features

  You'll note that many of the dependencies require Node.js 0.7.8 and higher. That's because we're using new cluster features to take advantage of multiple CPUs, and the new domains feature to handle errors gracefully.

• Ridiculous speed

  This site should be surprisingly fast. Towards that end, things are cached and served from memory whenever possible, and ETagged for browser-cacheablility.

• No Single-Page App Insanity, Push-State, Sammy, Etc.

  This is a documentation site. It should primarily function by talking to a database and returning HTML. It's not an application.

  By returning HTML, we get a lot of benefits for free. Some client-side JavaScript may be added later to smooth out rough edges, but first, it must all work with client-side JavaScript disabled. It's not that we expect any users to have JavaScript disabled, but rather that this discipline forces a consistent approach to the site structure.

• Beauty

  The goal of this site is to be so beautiful, that people want to publish their programs to npm just to be a part of it. The design of the site must be elegant. Colors, fonts, and spacing must be humane, consistent, and make relevant information clear.

• Security

  User data is sacred. This site must be a step up in terms of security from just doing things on the command line. If it's not, then we have failed.

• Unceremonious MVC

  No big MVC class heirarchy. Just have the route handler get some data, then hand it off to a template. Simpler is better.

• Small Modules

  No single JavaScript file should be more than about 200 lines. If it is, then that's a sign that it should be split up.

• DRY Dependencies

  If multiple different routes all have to keep doing the same thing, then they should either be the same route, or the repeated bits belong in a dependency.

• Check in node_modules

  Every time you add a dependency, check it into git. This is a deployed website. We need to keep things predictable.

• No Binary Dependencies

  There is no need. We are proxying data to redis and couchdb. It's all JSON and HTML. Node can do that just fine without compiling anything.

• Search using Search Engines

  While we may end up integrating some kind of search into the site directly, it's more likely that we'll go with Bing or DuckDuckGo or Google. There are advantages to an integrated search, but no matter how nice we may make it, people will always go to their default search engines to try to find node modules. We must optimize for that use case first, and then build up from there.

  This is another reason why a plain-jane HTML site is best. Search engines are awesome at searching it.

Visual specs

• http://chrisglass.com/work/npm/specs/
• http://chrisglass.com/work/npm/

Contributing

Contributions welcome!

If you are going to take on some huge part of the site, please post an issue first to discuss the direction. Beyond that, just fork and send pull requests, as is the custom of our time. Your name will be added to the AUTHORS file, and displayed on the /about page.

See the issues page if you are looking for something to help out with. In general, submissions that add new functionality or fix actual bugs will be favored over those that are purely stylistic.

Please follow common sense, and these guidelines:

Git

Learn to use and love the rebase command to make your commits tidy.

1. Commits should be atomic. One thing = one commit. Do not send a pull request with 5 commits doing things, and then 4 un-doing them, and then 3 finishing it. Do not send a pull request with one commit that does 15 different things.
2. First line of your commit message should be no more than 50 characters. Following the first line, there should be a blank line, then optionally some paragraphs providing further detail, which should wrap at no more than 80 characters.
3. Please set up your git config so that a real email address appears in your commits. Be advised that this email address is public.

Code

The npm-www site follows a slightly less strict JavaScript style than npm itself, but it is similar.

1. Use semicolons minimally, only where they are necessary.
2. Lines should be no more than 70 characters or so. It's better to be too short than too long.
3. 2-space indentation.

Overall Structure

1. Dependencies are checked in. This is a website, not a library.
2. There is no lib or utils. There is a node_modules folder and a package.json file.
3. There is no framework. There are dependencies that do a single thing well and are well tested and documented.
4. Routes go in the routes folder. Data fetching and manipulation goes in the models folder. HTML construction is done in ejs in the templates folder. These concerns must remain separate.
5. Client-side JavaScript shall be used when it is absolutely necessary. (There are no features yet, or planned, where this is the case. But that might change, of course, once more of the base functionality is established.)
6. See also the "Design Philosophy" above.