# @npmcli/installed-package-contents Get the list of files installed in a package in node_modules, including bundled dependencies. This is useful if you want to remove a package node from the tree _without_ removing its child nodes, for example to extract a new version of the dependency into place safely. It's sort of the reflection of [npm-packlist](http://npm.im/npm-packlist), but for listing out the _installed_ files rather than the files that _will_ be installed. This is of course a much simpler operation, because we don't have to handle ignore files or package.json `files` lists. ## USAGE ```js // programmatic usage const pkgContents = require('@npmcli/installed-package-contents') pkgContents({ path: 'node_modules/foo', depth: 1 }).then(files => { // files is an array of items that need to be passed to // rimraf or moved out of the way to make the folder empty // if foo bundled dependencies, those will be included. // It will not traverse into child directories, because we set // depth:1 in the options. // If the folder doesn't exist, this returns an empty array. }) pkgContents({ path: 'node_modules/foo', depth: Infinity }).then(files => { // setting depth:Infinity tells it to keep walking forever // until it hits something that isn't a directory, so we'll // just get the list of all files, but not their containing // directories. }) ``` As a CLI: ```bash $ installed-package-contents node_modules/bundle-some -d1 node_modules/.bin/some node_modules/bundle-some/package.json node_modules/bundle-some/node_modules/@scope/baz node_modules/bundle-some/node_modules/.bin/foo node_modules/bundle-some/node_modules/foo ``` CLI options: ``` Usage: installed-package-contents <path> [-d<n> --depth=<n>] Lists the files installed for a package specified by <path>. Options: -d<n> --depth=<n> Provide a numeric value ("Infinity" is allowed) to specify how deep in the file tree to traverse. Default=1 -h --help Show this usage information ``` ## OPTIONS * `depth` Number, default `1`. How deep to traverse through folders to get contents. Typically you'd want to set this to either `1` (to get the surface files and folders) or `Infinity` (to get all files), but any other positive number is supported as well. If set to `0` or a negative number, returns the path provided and (if it is a package) its set of linked bins. * `path` Required. Path to the package in `node_modules` where traversal should begin. ## RETURN VALUE A Promise that resolves to an array of fully-resolved files and folders matching the criteria. This includes all bundled dependencies in `node_modules`, and any linked executables in `node_modules/.bin` that the package caused to be installed. An empty or missing package folder will return an empty array. Empty directories _within_ package contents are listed, even if the `depth` argument would cause them to be traversed into. ## CAVEAT If using this module to generate a list of files that should be recursively removed to clear away the package, note that this will leave empty directories behind in certain cases: - If all child packages are bundled dependencies, then the `node_modules` folder will remain. - If all child packages within a given scope were bundled dependencies, then the `node_modules/@scope` folder will remain. - If all linked bin scripts were removed, then an empty `node_modules/.bin` folder will remain. In the interest of speed and algorithmic complexity, this module does _not_ do a subsequent readdir to see if it would remove all directory entries, though it would be easier to look at if it returned `node_modules` or `.bin` in that case rather than the contents. However, if the intent is to pass these arguments to `rimraf`, it hardly makes sense to do _two_ `readdir` calls just so that we can have the luxury of having to make a third. Since the primary use case is to delete a package's contents so that they can be re-filled with a new version of that package, this caveat does not pose a problem. Empty directories are already ignored by both npm and git.