Is there a way to automatically build the package.json file for Node.js projects

Question

Is package.json supposed to be manually edited? Couldn\'t a program like npm just look through the files, see the \"require\" statements, and then use that to put the necess

Answer 1

npm init

to create the package.json file and then you use

ls node_modules/ | xargs npm install --save

to fill in the modules you have in the node_modules folder.

Edit: @paldepind pointed out that the second command is redundant because npm init now automatically adds what you have in your node_modules/ folder. I don't know if this has always been the case, but now at least, it works without the second command.