On Postman, we made use of a local node module to share code between frontend, backend & worker. It is similar to how one would install npm modules from npm registry or github, except that the path is pointed to a local folder.
ie: "postman-templating": "file:../modules/postman-templating".
We wanted to find a way to share the templating logic because:
- Used in frontend, backend & worker.
- Better consistency, we just have to change the code in one place rather than three.
There are several options that we considered:
- npm install from separate repo (postmangovsg-js-tools?)
- npm pack and copy tarball into respective folders
- Publish to npm registry
- Separate branch (sdk branch)
- Use lerna to manage multi-package repo
- local node module
We decided to use local shared module as the rest of the options are more complicated or requires alot more time & effort to set them up.
Any shared module can be installed using npm install ../modules/postman-templating.
To test the changes you want to make to a module like postman-templating:
- Make changes to the module.
- Run
npm start buildinpostman-templating.
npm start build will remove & replace the build folder in postman-templating with the updated change.
If there are any new dependencies installed in the local node module, the parent folder's package-lock.json needs to be updated. This can be done through deleting the node_modules and running npm install.
- Install dependency in
postman-templating. - Run
npm start buildinpostman-templating. - Delete
node_modulesin the parent folder. egbackendorfrontend. - Run
npm installin the parent folder - Parent folder's
package-lock.jsonshould be updated.
Any dependencies that are needed to build the local module should be installed as a dependency instead of a dev-dependency because when we deploy, we will run npm ci before building the module. npm ci do not install dev-dependency, which will cause the build to fail.