How to have multiple NPM users set up locally?

Question

I am using two NPM accounts: a public one and a private one. How would I set it up so that I don\'t need to npm login every time I publish a module on a different a

Answer 1

This is how I'm solving it having 4 different NPM logins.

1. In each project's .gitignore (and .npmignore for NPM modules) add this line: .npmrc. This will make sure you never commit (or publish) the .npmrc file.
2. In each project's folder create .npmrc file containing this: //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 (replace the GUID with an actual NPM auth token, e.g. you can grab it from ~/.npmrc)

The npm CLI will look in your current folder for the .npmrc file (or in any parent folder) and will use it for auth.

As the result all npm commands work as is, no need to pass --userconfig or anything.

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In addition to the above you can have the default NPM token across your computer/laptop.

1. Make sure .npmrc is NOT present in .gitignore (which is common for most projects out there).
2. Create the .npmrc file in the root folder of your project. Put this inside: //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}. This will make npm to use NPM_TOKEN env. var. And npm will abort if such env. var. is not found.
3. Commit and push that file. (Yes. Seriously.)
4. Make sure your shell has the NPM_TOKEN environment variable set. E.g. NPM_TOKEN=11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111. I have it in my ~/.bash_profile.

All the projects, which have this file committed, will use your environment variable NPM_TOKEN for npm auth.

As the result all npm commands work as is, no need to pass --userconfig or anything.

This is good and secure enough for CI (Continuous Integration). All CI-s allow you to set environment variables. Using this approach you can change the NPM user with a simple env. var. change.

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Pro Tip

Type npm whoami command to check which token is currently being used in the folder.