I want to download some resources upon 'npm install', presumably using a 'prepublish' script

Question

Specifically, I want to download angular.min.js when running 'npm install'.

From what I read here the place to do such things is in a prepublish script. It also mentions I don't need to rely on having wget/curl installed on the system.

However it doesn't go into any detail on how to go about doing it.

Anybody knows how to do it?

Answer 1

Ok, solved it myself.

I added a small javascript file (prepublish.js):

var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');

function download(filename, url) {
  var file = fs.createWriteStream(filename);
  var request = http.get(url, function(response) {
    response.pipe(file);
  });
}

console.log('Downloading angular');
download('public/scripts/angular.min.js', 'http://code.angularjs.org/1.0.7/angular.min.js');
download('public/scripts/angular.js', 'http://code.angularjs.org/1.0.7/angular.js');
console.log('Downloading angular-ui-router');
download('public/scripts/angular-ui-router.min.js', 'http://angular-ui.github.io/ui-router/release/angular-ui-router.min.js');
download('public/scripts/angular-ui-router.js', 'http://angular-ui.github.io/ui-router/release/angular-ui-router.js');

and I modified my package.json:

...
"scripts": {
  "start": "node app.js",
  "prepublish": "node prepublish.js"
},

Now when running 'npm install' it downloads my dependencies!