In my opinion, I don't enjoy the fact that I have to create a bunch of new files which I know I will need to make anyway at a later date whenever I decide to create a new npm package. In the end, I just do this whenever it comes time to actually make that new file. I name it and add the contents of what I need into it.

To me, this seems like a tedious process. That's why I decided to make create-ps, a command-line tool which allows you to create files that you need for an average NPM package.

Demo

As you can see in the demo video, I added multiple files, directories, and more into the project directory. You can select what you want to include to fit your project's needs, such as examples files, a pre-made index.mjs with your installed dependencies imported, and more.

Installation

npm install -g create-ps 

Usage

• Navigate to the directory you are going to create your package in.

• Run the following command, replacing projectName with the name of the package.

  cps [projectName]

• Select which files you'd like to include and exclude, as shown below:

┌  create-ps 
│
◇  Enter a short description of the package:
│  Creates the foundations for an NPM package.
│
◆  Select what you'd like to include:
│  ◼ Source (Recommended)
│  ◼ Test
│  ◻ Examples
│  ◼ Documentation
│  ◻ Assets / Images
│  ◻ Internationalization (i18n)
│  ◼ GitHub workflows
│  ◻ Dependabot configuration
│  ◼ Gitignore
│  ◼ Readme
│  ◻ Contributing guidelines
│  ◼ Changelog
│  ◼ Code of Conduct
│  ◼ License
│  ◼ Dependencies

pkg-config

If you run the following command in your terminal, you can edit various fields in your package.json.

cps pkg-config

You're then able to select the fields you would like to include and customize. For example, but not limited to, the Author, Keywords, and the License you are using (you can use this list from SPDX to find the right identifier for the license field). Once confirmed, create-ps will ask a series of prompts for you to fill out the necessary information, and will edit your package.json accordingly.

◆  Select what you'd like to include:
│  ◼ Author
│  ◼ Repository
│  ◼ Keywords
│  ◻ Homepage
│  ◻ Funding
│  ◼ License

You can also run this in an existing project to fill out and/or replace any fields.

The Logic Behind This

In it's simplest form, all the logic is just switch cases.

The code iterates over the toggles and, based on each toggle, creates the appropriate files and/or directories. These switch cases hold the logic for creating each file/directory when each toggle is selected. For example, here's the logic for CHANGELOG.md:

case 'CHANGELOG.md':
    const currentDate = new Date().toISOString().split('T')[0];
    const changelogContent = `# Changelog\n\n# v1.0.0 (${currentDate})\n\n* 🎉 Initial commit`;
    const changelogFile = path.join(process.cwd(),  'CHANGELOG.md');
    await fs.writeFile(changelogFile, changelogContent , 'utf8');
    break;

currentDate creates today's date and appends that after 'v1.0.0', changelogContent holds the content of the file, changelogFile creates a full file path for the file, then everything is written to the file using fs.

Things can get a bit more complicated though. For example, within src/, there needs to be logic to change file paths and content within other files, as ESM and CommonJS have different logic, and in LICENSE, the licenses are fetched from the GitHub API, with the user having to select the license they want from the prompts.

If this CLI has been useful in any way to you, feel free to give it a star on GitHub. Your support is very much appreciated!