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TypeScript SDK Development: A 5-year-old could follow this step-by-step ~ Part 4, Publishing to NPM

Publish your first SDK to NPM

25 Jun 20243 min read
Publish your first SDK to NPM

Helloooooooo!

Hope you're doing great! This is SMY! 👋 Let's Jump right in 🚀

Part 1: https://smy.hashnode.dev/typescript-sdk-development-a-5-year-old-could-follow-this-step-by-step-part-1-our-first-mvp

Part 2: https://smy.hashnode.dev/typescript-sdk-development-a-5-year-old-could-follow-this-step-by-step-part-2-folder-structure-integrating-api

Part 3: https://smy.hashnode.dev/typescript-sdk-development-a-5-year-old-could-follow-this-step-by-step-part-3-making-test-apps

Part 5: https://smy.hashnode.dev/typescript-sdk-development-a-5-year-old-could-follow-this-step-by-step-part-5-cdn-for-browsers

This is Part 4 of our SDK development series where we will publish our SDK

Contents:

  • Creating an NPM account

  • Publishing to NPM, semantic versioning, and LICENSE

Step 1: Creating an NPM account

Head over to https://www.npmjs.com and create an account.

Step 2: Publish

In the terminal write:

npm login

After following the login steps, write

npm publish

This can fail due to duplicate package names or wrong configuration in package.json

Your package.json should look like the following:

{
  "name": "ts-lib-template-starter",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "SDK development tutorial",
  "main": "./src/index.ts",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "build": "tsup ./src/index.ts --watch"
  },
  "type": "module",
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/node": "^20.14.8",
    "tsup": "^8.1.0",
    "typescript": "^5.5.2"
  }
}

Congrats you just published your first SDK to NPM 🎉🥳 🚀🚀🚀

Step 3: Semantic versioning

When publishing a library it is good to keep versioning in check. Versioning helps the developer integrate the code to get an idea of what update happened to the SDK. Furthermore, the right versioning will help package managers to update to the level as it is mentioned in their package.json.

To help developers who rely on your code, we recommend starting your package version at 1.0.0 and incrementing as follows:

Code statusStageRuleExample version
First releaseNew productStart with 1.0.01.0.0
Backward compatible bug fixesPatch releaseIncrement the third digit1.0.1
Backward compatible new featuresMinor releaseIncrement the middle digit and reset last digit to zero1.1.0
Changes that break backward compatibilityMajor releaseIncrement the first digit and reset middle and last digits to zero2.0.0

Learn more about semantic versioning here: https://docs.npmjs.com/about-semantic-versioning

Step 4: LICENSE

Specify a license for your package so that people know how they are permitted to use it, and any restrictions you're placing on it.

Open source licenses comparison: popular copyleft licenses and permissive open source licenses.

source: https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/

For example, this SDK is open for distribution and modifying the code so I would use MIT as LICENSE.

In package.json

  "license": "MIT"

Learn more about various types of LICENCES here: https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/

Wrapping Up:

We Just completed the steps to publish our SDK. Head over to Part 5, where we will make a CDN for browsers 🚀

.....

Now you're equipped with the knowledge to publish your own SDK. Happy coding! 🚀

That's it, folks! hope it was a good read for you. Thank you! ✨

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