Query npmjs registry via api

Question

I find I\'m often unsatisfied with the ordering and expressiveness of searches on https://www.npmjs.com/. I guess there should be a way to programmatically query the server

Answer 1

If you can't find a package or are just hacking together a shell script the Registry API Docs in the registry's git repository include detailed information on Search API and search qualifiers.

If you're looking for the most popular insecure package in the public registry run:

wget -qO - "http://registry.npmjs.com/-/v1/search?text=is:insecure&popularity=1.0&size=1"

The above uses the is:insecure search qualifier without any additional text criteria and grabs size=1 results where popularity=1.0 (the most popular).

Check in the docs directory in the repo for a number of other useful things such as:

• Detailed list of response Package Metadata.
• Replicate API for scoped and unscoped packages.
• Information on getting download counts.
• Walkthrough on how to create a registry "follower".