Install NPM package while running app

Question

Can I force Node.JS install npm-package when executing require('package') instead of triggering error?

It will be more convenient than running npm i package for every package.

Answer 1

Dependency packages should be managed through package.json file. It's because you can easily manage the version of packages required by you application. I don't think it's a good practice to install dependency at runtime.

Reference: Using a package.json

Answer 2

You can't set Node.js to do this (since Node doesn't actually know about npm).

I wouldn't recommend doing anything like this; if you mistyped a package name, you would download the wrong package, possibly running malicious code on your computer.

Remember, anyone can publish an npm package, and packages can run any command (including rm -rf) during the installation process.

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Follow the below at your own risk:

You can get something like the behavior you're describing with https://github.com/siddharthkp/auto-install.

npm install -g auto-install
cd project-name/
auto-install

I would recommend using the --secure option for auto-install. That will only install popular modules (> 10k downloads in the last month). This will eliminate some of the risk of typos, however, if you're using an uncommon package, it won't be installed automatically.