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

The package.json file is used by npm to learn about your node.js project.

Use npm init to generate package.json files for you!

It comes bundled with npm. Read its documentation here: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/init

Also, there's an official tool you can use to generate this file programmatically: https://github.com/npm/init-package-json

First off, run

npm init

...will ask you a few questions (read this first) about your project/package and then generate a package.json file for you.

Then, once you have a package.json file, use

npm install <pkg> --save

or

npm install <pkg> --save-dev

...to install a dependency and automatically append it to your package.json's dependencies list.

(Note: You may need to manually tweak the version ranges for your dependencies.)

I just wrote a simple script to collect the dependencies in ./node_modules. It fulfills my requirement at the moment. This may help some others, I post it here.

var fs = require("fs");function main() {  fs.readdir("./node_modules", function (err, dirs) {    if (err) {      console.log(err);      return;    }    dirs.forEach(function(dir){      if (dir.indexOf(".") !== 0) {        var packageJsonFile = "./node_modules/" + dir + "/package.json";        if (fs.existsSync(packageJsonFile)) {          fs.readFile(packageJsonFile, function (err, data) {            if (err) {              console.log(err);            }            else {              var json = JSON.parse(data);              console.log('"'+json.name+'": "' + json.version + '",');            }          });        }      }    });  });}main();

In my case, the above script outputs:

"colors": "0.6.0-1","commander": "1.0.5","htmlparser": "1.7.6","optimist": "0.3.5","progress": "0.1.0","request": "2.11.4","soupselect": "0.2.0",   // Remember: remove the comma character in the last line.

Now, you can copy&paste them. Have fun!