Developing on a Mac – Part III – NodeJS

I wrote Part I of this series to provide a foundation upon which to build a collection of minimal guides to developing software on a Mac. In this post let’s look at what needs to be installed on your Mac for developing NodeJS applications. If you haven’t read Part I, make sure you do and install:

Homebrew
Developer Tools

NodeJS

NodeJS can be installed and managing using a number of package managers, just like we saw with Ruby. Or, you can install it directly from nodejs.org. You can even install it with Homebrew!

Homebrew Install

Installing NodeJS with Homebrew is as simple as running brew install node in your terminal.

Both node (the NodeJS engine) and npm (Node Package Manager) are installed:

% node --version
v19.1.0

% npm --version
8.19.3

Now to install a few node packages in the global environment:

npm install -g dotenv openssl

Where’d they get installed?

$ npm list -g --depth 0 -p
/opt/homebrew/lib
/opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/dotenv
/opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/npm
/opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openssl

Changing versions

It’s not uncommon to be developing with multiple NodeJS versions, especially in a professional environment. Installing and managing Node versions with Homebrew isn’t too difficult, if you make the decision to only have one version installed at a time. No joke.

% brew search node
==> Formulae
libbitcoin-node     node-build          node@14             nodebrew
linode-cli          node-sass           node@16             nodeenv
llnode              node@10             node@18             nodenv
node                node@12             node_exporter       ode

Recall that we installed v19.1.10. As it turns out that isn’t a Long Term Support (LTS) release. Let’s install v14.

brew uninstall node
brew install node@14

You are undoubtedly protesting: “What about all of the cool command line tools I installed through npm?!” You should probably be keeping a list of those and reinstall them.

Using NodeJS.org

NodeJS.org hosts binary package installers for Node. You can install these packages by downloading and then double-clicking on them or via the command-line.

Installing via the command line uses the installer application:

sudo installer -pkg node-v18.12.1.pkg -target /

If you’ve never used pkgutil before on your Mac, try it out!

% pkgutil --packages
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_SDK_macOS13
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_SDK_macOS12
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables
com.apple.files.data-template
com.apple.pkg.MRTConfigData_10_15.16U4211
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_SwiftBackDeploy
com.apple.pkg.XProtectPayloads_10_15.16U4232
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_macOS_SDK
org.nodejs.npm.pkg
org.nodejs.node.pkg

As promised, the NodeJS.org installs node in /usr/local/bin:

% which node
/usr/local/bin/node

Let’s see where our modules are installed: npm install -g dotenv

npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/dotenv'

Oh! sudo access is required. And that’s why I’d stop right here. NodeJS installed in this manner is not going to support multiple versions and will make your development experience miserable.

Using nvm

A third method of installing NodeJS is through NVM, the Node Version Manager. Of course you can install nvm using their instructions, or use Homebrew.

% brew install nvm
Please note that upstream has asked us to make explicit managing
nvm via Homebrew is unsupported by them and you should check any
problems against the standard nvm install method prior to reporting.

You should create NVM's working directory if it doesn't exist:

mkdir ~/.nvm

Add the following to ~/.zshrc or your desired shell
configuration file:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "/opt/homebrew/opt/nvm/nvm.sh" ] && . "/opt/homebrew/opt/nvm/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
[ -s "/opt/homebrew/opt/nvm/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm" ] && . "/opt/homebrew/opt/nvm/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm" # This loads nvm bash_completion

You can set $NVM_DIR to any location, but leaving it unchanged from
/opt/homebrew/opt/nvm will destroy any nvm-installed Node installations
upon upgrade/reinstall.

nvm list
N/A
iojs -> N/A (default)
node -> stable (-> N/A) (default)
unstable -> N/A (default)

Once you’ve installed a NVM you can use nvm install to install a specific version.

nvm install 18
Downloading and installing node v18.12.1...
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v18.12.1/node-v18.12.1-darwin-arm64.tar.xz...
######################################################################### 100.0%
Computing checksum with shasum -a 256
Checksums matched!
Now using node v18.12.1 (npm v8.19.2)
Creating default alias: default -> 18 (-> v18.12.1)

% which node
/Users/joe/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.1/bin/node

% which npm

And installing the dotenv package.

% npm install -g dotenv

% npm list -g --depth 0 -p
/Users/joe/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.1/lib
/Users/joe/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.1/lib/node_modules/corepack
/Users/joe/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.1/lib/node_modules/dotenv
/Users/joe/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.1/lib/node_modules/npm

Creating a Basic Application

With NodeJS installed, let’s take it for a spin and write a “simple” application that reads data from a Postgres database.

% mkdir ~/projects/nodejs/simple_node_app
% cd ~/projects/nodejs/simple_node_app
% npm init -y
Wrote to /Users/joe/projects/nodejs/simple_node_app/package.json

We’ll be using the pg, dotenv, and yargs packages.

npm install pg dotenv yargs --save-deps

Of course, to communicate with a Postgres database we’ll need one! Here we’ll install Postgres, start it, and then create a new database, user, and grants for this example.

% brew install postgresql
% brew services start postgresql
% psql postgres
psql (14.6 (Homebrew))
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# create database simple_node_app_db;
postgres=# create user simple_node_app_user with password 'simple_node_app_pw';
postgres=# grant all privileges on database simple_node_app_db to simple_node_app_user;
postgres=# q

Back to our Node code. We’ll put the following in index.js:

require("dotenv").config();

var argv = require('yargs/yargs')(process.argv.slice(2)).argv

const { Client } = require("pg");

const database = new Client();

async function createUser(username) {
  await database.connect();

  await database.query("CREATE TABLE users (username VARCHAR(32))", (err, res) => {
    // Ignore errors
  });

  console.log(`Inserting user ${username}`);
  await database.query("INSERT INTO users (username) values ($1)", [username]);

  database.end().then(() => {
    console.log("Exiting...");
    process.exit();
  });

}

if (argv.username) {

  let username = argv.username;

  createUser(username);

} else {
  console.log("Usage:  node index.js --username USERNAME");
}

require("dotenv").config();

var argv = require('yargs/yargs')(process.argv.slice(2)).argv

const { Client } = require("pg");

const database = new Client();

async function createUser(username) {

await database.connect();

await database.query("CREATE TABLE users (username VARCHAR(32))", (err, res) => {

// Ignore errors

});

console.log(`Inserting user ${username}`);

await database.query("INSERT INTO users (username) values ($1)", [username]);

database.end().then(() => {

console.log("Exiting...");

process.exit();

});

}

if (argv.username) {

let username = argv.username;

createUser(username);

} else {

console.log("Usage: node index.js --username USERNAME");

}

You can try running this as is, but the connection to the database will fail. That can be fixed with a .env file which utilizes the pg default environment variables for the database, username, password, etc.

PGUSER=simple_node_app_user
PGPASSWORD=simple_node_app_password
PGHOST=localhost
PGDATABASE=simple_node_app_db

% node index.js --username joe
Inserting user joe
Exiting...

Which Installation Method to Use?

Install Method	sudo Required	Location	Uninstalling	Changing Versions
Homebrew	Yes	/opt/homebrew	brew uninstall	Uninstall and reinstall
NodeJS.org	Yes	/usr/local	Painful	Uninstall and reinstall
nvm	No	~/.nvm/versions/node	nvm uninstall	nvm install and nvm use

I recommend using either Homebrew or NVM for installing and managing versions of NodeJS. Uninstalling the version provided by NodeJS.org is a pain in the ass, but can be done. I wouldn’t recommend the method
here, but rather use this method.

WARNING: sudo and rm -f ahead. Always read and get a feeling for what commands do before running them. You may consider commenting out the rm command to see what files are going to be removed.

% for f in `pkgutil --only-files --files org.nodejs.node.pkg`;
do
echo "Removing /$f"
sudo rm -f /$f
done

% for f in `pkgutil --only-files --files org.nodejs.node.pkg`;

echo "Removing /$f"

sudo rm -f /$f

done

followed by

for f in `pkgutil --only-files --files org.nodejs.npm.pkg`;
do
echo "Removing /$f"
sudo rm -f /$f
done

for f in `pkgutil --only-files --files org.nodejs.npm.pkg`;

echo "Removing /$f"

sudo rm -f /$f

done

and finally,

% sudo pkgutil --forget org.nodejs.node.pkg
Forgot package 'org.nodejs.node.pkg' on '/'.
% sudo pkgutil --forget org.nodejs.npm.pkg
Forgot package 'org.nodejs.npm.pkg' on '/'.

% sudo pkgutil --forget org.nodejs.node.pkg

Forgot package 'org.nodejs.node.pkg' on '/'.

% sudo pkgutil --forget org.nodejs.npm.pkg

Forgot package 'org.nodejs.npm.pkg' on '/'.

Developing on a Mac – Part III – NodeJS

NodeJS

Homebrew Install

Changing versions

Using NodeJS.org

Using nvm

Creating a Basic Application

Which Installation Method to Use?

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