npm: Find the installed version of an npm package

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To see the latest version of all the npm package installed, including their dependencies:

npm list

Example:

❯ npm list
/Users/flavio/dev/node/cowsay
└─┬ cowsay@1.3.1
  ├── get-stdin@5.0.1
  ├─┬ optimist@0.6.1
  │ ├── minimist@0.0.10
  │ └── wordwrap@0.0.3
  ├─┬ string-width@2.1.1
  │ ├── is-fullwidth-code-point@2.0.0
  │ └─┬ strip-ansi@4.0.0
  │   └── ansi-regex@3.0.0
  └── strip-eof@1.0.0

You can also just open the package-lock.json file, but this involves some visual scanning.

npm list -g is the same, but for globally installed packages.

To get only your top-level packages (basically, the ones you told npm to install and you listed in the package.json), run npm list --depth=0:

❯ npm list --depth=0
/Users/flavio/dev/node/cowsay
└── cowsay@1.3.1

You can get the version of a specific package by specifying the name:

❯ npm list cowsay
/Users/flavio/dev/node/cowsay
└── cowsay@1.3.1

This also works for dependencies of packages you installed:

❯ npm list minimist
/Users/flavio/dev/node/cowsay
└─┬ cowsay@1.3.1
  └─┬ optimist@0.6.1
    └── minimist@0.0.10

If you want to see what’s the latest available version of the package on the npm repository, run npm view [package_name] version:

❯ npm view cowsay version

1.3.1

Lessons in this unit:

0: Introduction
1: How to use or execute a package installed using npm
2: npm dependencies and devDependencies
3: How to fix the "Missing write access" error when using npm
4: npm can install packages in the parent folder
5: Install an older version of an npm package
6: ▶︎ Find the installed version of an npm package
7: How to test an npm package locally
8: npm global or local packages
9: What are peer dependencies in a Node module?
10: `npm run dev` is a long-running program
11: Semantic Versioning using npm
12: Uninstalling npm packages with `npm uninstall`
13: An introduction to the npm package manager
14: The npx Node Package Runner
15: The package.json guide
16: The package-lock.json file
17: What is pnpm?
18: Should you commit the node_modules folder to Git?
19: Update all the Node dependencies to their latest version
20: Where does npm install the packages?
21: Bumping Node.js dependencies
22: Run package.json scripts upon any file changes in a folder