A 5-Year-Old Could Follow This TypeScript SDK Development Guide ~ Part 4: Publishing to NPM

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8 Jul 2024

Helloooooooo!

Hope you're doing great! This is SMY! šŸ‘‹ Let's jump right in šŸš€

Part 1: Our First MVP

Part 2: Structure and API

Part 3: Making Test Apps

Part 4: Publishing to npm

Part 5: CDN for Browsers

This is Part 4 of our SDK development series where we will publish our SDK

Contents:

  • āš” Creating an NPM account
  • āš” Publishing to NPM, semantic versioning, and LICENSE

Step 1: Creating an NPM Account

Head over to https://www.npmjs.com, and create an account.

Step 2: Publish

In the terminal, write:

npm login

After following the login steps, write:

npm publish

This can fail due to duplicate package names or wrong configuration in package.json

Your package.json should look like the following:

{
  "name": "ts-lib-template-starter",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "SDK development tutorial",
  "main": "./src/index.ts",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "build": "tsup ./src/index.ts --watch"
  },
  "type": "module",
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/node": "^20.14.8",
    "tsup": "^8.1.0",
    "typescript": "^5.5.2"
  }
}

Congrats; you just published your first SDK to NPM šŸŽ‰šŸ„³ šŸš€šŸš€šŸš€

Step 3: Semantic Versioning

When publishing a library, it is good to keep versioning in check. Versioning helps the developer integrate the code to get an idea of what update happened to the SDK. Furthermore, the right versioning will help package managers to update to the level as it is mentioned in their package.json.

To help developers who rely on your code, we recommend starting your package version at 1.0.0 and incrementing as follows:

Code status

Stage

Rule

Example version

First release

New product

Start with 1.0.0

1.0.0

Backward-compatible bug fixes

Patch release

Increment the third digit

1.0.1

Backward-compatible new features

Minor release

Increment the middle, digit and reset the last digit to zero

1.1.0

Changes that break backward compatibility

Major release

Increment the first digit and reset the middle and last digits to zero

2.0.0

Learn more about semantic versioning here: https://docs.npmjs.com/about-semantic-versioning

Step 4: LICENSE

Specify a license for your package so that people know how they are permitted to use it, and any restrictions you're placing on it.

source: https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/

For example, this SDK is open for distribution and modifying the code so I would use MIT as LICENSE.

In package.json

  "license": "MIT"

Learn more about various types of LICENCES here: https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/

Wrapping Up:

We Just completed the steps to publish our SDK. Head over to Part 5 where we will make a CDN for browsers šŸš€

.....

Now, you're equipped with the knowledge to publish your own SDK. Happy coding! šŸš€

That's it, folks! hope it was a good read for you. Thank you! āœØ

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