Introduction To SharePoint Framework (SPFx) - Zero To Hero Series - Part One

Go to another site, npmjs (https://www.npmjs.com/). This site is a node registry where there are many node packages available, and there is lot of reusable code, which we can use in our projects.

Once nodejs is installed, go to cmder and type “node”, you will see the below screen which means we are good to go with nodejs. (to exit, enter .exit and press enter)



One of the packages available is npm (Node Package Manager). It’s showing the npm version as 3.10.10, and it might be possible that you might see a different version, because it updates very rapidly.



First thing that we do after install Node, is to write

npm install –g npm

NOTE

Node modules can be installed globally (-g) which means you can run them from command like any other DOS program but they can also be installed locally and then they go to a folder called node_modules. Then they will be available to use in your code but not at an operating system level.

If you are using the above command on MAC or LINUX machine then add a word – sudo with the above command, as shown below:-

sudo npm install –g npm

Once you run the command (npm install –g npm), it will look into the npm registry and will look for a package named npm and it will install it. While installing, it is just copying collection of JavaScript files into my profile and I can very well uninstall it using npm uninstall –g, I can also update it and so on.



Wait for the node package to get installed, and the below screen shows that it has been installed.



Now if you will hit the command npm ---v, it will tell you the version of node package manager installed.



Great, now that node package manager has been installed, we can start writing Node-based projects.

Additional Notes

When you will install node.js from official website, you will see an option to install LTS version, as shown below. I will highly recommend not to install this version, as you might face the below scenarios (errors) after installing LTS version, as it comes with limited features. I have also included the local drive image showing less items in the nodejs folder, after its installation.

Summary

In this article, we saw the introduction of SharePoint Framework and learned about Node-based development. The commands used in this article are,

In the next article of this series, we will see more on Node-based development and introduction to other tools and technologies required for SharePoint Framework.