NPM

See the GH docs page on Using Node.js with GitHub Actions. Some of the samples come from here.

To build a Node app (such as React or Vue) and serve it with GH Pages, see the Deploy GH Pages section of this cookbook site.

Set up Node action

Note that the action environment already include Node.js, but using actions/setup-node gives more control.

See Set up Node.js Environment action.

Set up a Node.js environment by adding problem matchers and optionally downloading and adding it to the PATH

Options

Sample from GH Actions recommendation. Note that v2 does not work but v2.1.1 and v2-beta are available (August 2020).

• main.yml

    steps:
      - name: Set up Node.js environment
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2-beta
        with:
          # Set always-auth in npmrc
          always-auth: # optional, default is false
  
          # Version Spec of the version to use.  Examples: 12.x, 10.15.1, >=10.15.0
          node-version: # optional
  
          # Set this option if you want the action to check for the latest available version that satisfies the version spec
          check-latest: # optional
  
          # Optional registry to set up for auth. Will set the registry in a project level .npmrc and .yarnrc file, and set up auth to read in from env.NODE_AUTH_TOKEN
          registry-url: # optional
  
          # Optional scope for authenticating against scoped registries
          scope: # optional
  
          # Used to pull node distributions from node-versions.  Since there's a default, this is typically not supplied by the user.
          token: # optional, default is ${{ github.token }}
  
          # Deprecated. Use node-version instead. Will not be supported after October 1, 2019
          version: # optional
  

Samples

Basic

Use single Node.js version of say 16, 16.3.0, or lts/erbium (NVM syntax).

I created this based on the other samples.

• main.yml

    steps:
      - name: Checkout 🛎️
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
  
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '16'
  
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install
  
      - name: Build
        run: npm run build
  
      - name: Test 
        run: npm test
        env:
          CI: true
  

Cache dependencies

You can reduce build time if dependencies are cached between builds.

There are two recommended approaches here. Both require package-lock.json to be in version control.

Built-in to setup-node, based on doc:

• main.yml

    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
  
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '16'
          cache: 'npm'
  
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install
  

Using a separate cache action, based on GH docs:

• main.yml

    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
  
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: '16'
  
      - name: Cache Node.js modules
        uses: actions/cache@v2
        with:
          path: ~/.npm
          key: ${{ runner.OS }}-node-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }}
          restore-keys: |
            ${{ runner.OS }}-node-
            ${{ runner.OS }}-
  
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install
  

For the cache action, it looks like this depends on a lockfile existing. I don’t like to commit that - perhaps package.json can be used instead.

The docs actually use npm ci which will delete node_modules, so I’ve set up npm install here instead.

Matrix

This sample comes from the docs and is similar to the default covered in the example after this.

• main.yml

    name: Node CI
  
    on: push
  
    jobs:
      build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  
        strategy:
          matrix:
            node-version: [8, 10, 12]
  
        steps:
          - name: Checkout
            uses: actions/checkout@v2
  
          - name: Set up Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
            uses: actions/setup-node@v2
            with:
              node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
  
          - name: Install dependencies
            run: npm install
  
          - name: Build
            run: npm run build
  
          - name: Test
            run: npm test
            env:
              CI: true
  

Set up Node action default

From the GitHub Action samples:

• Set up Node action - actions/setup-node

• main.yml

    name: Node CI
  
    on:
      push:
        branches: [ master ]
      pull_request:
        branches: [ master ]
  
    jobs:
      build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  
        strategy:
          matrix:
            node-version: [10, 12]
  
        steps:
          - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  
          - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
            uses: actions/setup-node@v2
            with:
              node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
  
          - name: Install dependencies
            run: npm ci
  
          - name: Build
            run: npm run build --if-present
  
          - name: Test
            run: npm test