This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Andrea Stagi
I recently needed to find a way to publish packages to NPM automatically and since all my projects are hosted on GitHub I thought why not using GitHub actions? In this article I explain how to do that in 3 simple steps!
?? Pssst... you can also check some real life examples:
Generate a new token on NPM
First of all you need to create a new NPM token that will be used to publish packages to NPM.
From NPM dashboard open main menu and select "Access token", then click on "Generate new token"
select "Automation" token to bypass two-factor authentication when publishing
then copy your token, it will be used as a GitHub secret as explained in the next section
Store your token as a GitHub secret
GitHub Actions can access your GitHub secrets, so that's the perfect place where to store your token!
Under "Settings" -> "Secrets" click on "New repository secret" and add your NPM Token your previously copied (in this example I use NPM_TOKEN
label to identify it)
Now it's time to write some code and create a new action to publish your package!
Write your action
Create a new GitHub Action publish.yml
inside your project under .github/workflows
.
name: Publish to NPM
on:
release:
types: [created]
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Setup Node
uses: actions/setup-node@v2
with:
node-version: '14.x'
registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'
- name: Install dependencies and build ?
run: npm install && npm run build
- name: Publish package on NPM ?
run: npm publish
env:
NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}
This action should run only when you create a new release on GitHub
on:
release:
types: [created]
The steps it executes are really clear:
- Checkout code
- Setup Node.js environment (using Node.js 14.x here)
- Install dependencies and build your package (if needed)
- Publish to NPM! As you can see this step uses our
NPM_TOKEN
secret to initializeNODE_AUTH_TOKEN
env variable
- name: Publish package to NPM ?
run: npm publish
env:
NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}
Create a new release
In order to see your action running, you need to create a new release on GitHub.
After that your package will be successfully published to NPM ?
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Andrea Stagi

Andrea Stagi | Sciencx (2021-08-25T16:06:51+00:00) Publish to NPM using GitHub Actions. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/08/25/publish-to-npm-using-github-actions/
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