How to publish a client-side script using npm?

Question

My nodejs package contains code for execution both on the backend, and a single .js file for execution on browsers. To make use of the browser script, it has to be put into a script element in an HTML file, obviously. My question is if there's a standard practice/convention with respect to how that browser .js file should be exposed to npm (or webpack or whatever) in a way that is independent of webpack, gulp, grunt, or other packaging tools. For example, by placing it into a scripts/ dir somewhere, or by including a simplistic nodejs/expressjs 3-line middleware that, when accessed via http://example.com/scripts/myscript.js, will send my script's content to browsers.

I've found this article, but that merely explains the trivial details of how to use a script element in an HTML page, rather than how to make npm install a script in standardized asset folder for pickup by static serving routes, asset management tools, or similar.

Answer 1

If you are publishing your package on NPM, an alternative that could work in your situation could be by using https://unpkg.com/ CDN. All packages that are published on NPM are available via this CDN.

Then in your frontend code you could simply reference that single js file you need.

  <script src="https://unpkg.com/yourpackage/path/to/your/file.js"></script>

Answer 2

CDN is your best bet if you are not packing the web content in the same package. If your web contents are in the same package you could use

"scripts": {
    "prepublish": "cp <source_path_of_file.js> <destination_dir>"
}

in package.json to pack it as a part of your npm package.