Sharing JS Code Across BitBucket Repositories

Recently, I have been writing APIs in node.js with the express framework, a React website and a React Native app that have some shared code. These are spread across several repositories, so I needed a way to share code across the repositories. So I created a node package in another repository.

Then I needed to figure out how to access the repository and install my package via npm. Fortunately, this proved to be relatively easy… Go to your account's BitBucket Settings > App Passwords. From here, you can create an app password and grant read access to your repositories. Then all you need to do is go to your package.json and add to your dependencies e.g.

  {
    …
    dependencies: {
      …,
      "[PACKAGE_NAME]": "git+https://[BITBUCKET_USERNAME]:
               [APP_PASSWORD]@bitbucket.org/PROJECT_NAME/
               REPOSITORY_NAME.git#BRANCH_NAME"
    },
    …
  }

If you then execute the "npm install" command this should install the repo to your node_modules folder.

But what happens when you push changes to the common repository? How do I run the code with the latest commits? Simply add an additional line to your package.json scripts:

  {
    …
    scripts: {
      …,
      "clean-start": "rm -rf -- node_modules/[PACKAGE_NAME]; 
                      npm install; npm start;"
    },
    …
  }

Then when you want to run with the latest changes use

npm run clean-start

instead of

npm start

How to create a VERY basic (and useless) Node Package

This is just the absolute basics of a node package so that you can install it via npm, whether it be a private or publicly accessible repo. See my follow up post about how to install a package that's in a private bitbucket repo.

Firstly, setup a basic package.json as follows:

    {
        "name": "tripwiretech-common",
        "version": "1.0.0",
        "description": "Tripwiretech common code",
        "main": "index.js",
        "author": "Tripwiretech",
        "license": "ISC",
        "scripts": {
            "start": "node index.js"
        }
    }

The name is one of the key properties in the package.json as it will represent your node package name. Any repo with a package.json can be published to npm. It is also recommended that your repo contains a readme.md in the root of the repo, this will be the documentation displayed on the npm website, if you choose to publish it there.

Next you will need some content exported in your index.js that other code can import and use. For the purposes of this example, I've kept it quite simple:

    module.exports = {
        Countries: ["Australia", "New Zealand", "South Africa"],
        Sports: ["Rugby", "Cricket"]
    }

Then you can import it and use it in your code. If you're struggling with more complicated node packages, then I recommend taking a look at one of the many existing and much more practical open source node packages that already exist on npm.