How to Update a Specific Node package using NPM

In this post, we'll learn how to use NPM to update a specific Node package.
Sometimes, you need to update a specific Node package, for example if it recently fixed a bug that you need.
Updating a Specific Package to Latest
To update a specific Node package, you can use the npm update
command.
This command takes a package name as an argument and updates it to the latest version.
For example, here is how to update just express
:
npm update express
You can do this in yarn by using the yarn upgrade
command:
yarn upgrade express
Update a Specific Package to Specific Version
If for some reason you don't want the latest version, perhaps because it may introduce breaking changes to your code, you can alternatively specify a specific version.
This done by adding the version number to the package name.
Here's how to update express
to version 4.0
:
npm update [email protected]
Here's how to do this in yarn:
yarn upgrade [email protected]
Updating a Specific Package to Latest Stable
Lastly, you can also update a specific package to the latest stable version by adding the @latest
suffix to the package name.
Here's how to use the @latest
suffix to update express
to the latest stable version:
npm update [email protected]
Here's how that is done in yarn:
yarn upgrade express --latest
Conclusion
In this post, we've seen how we can use npm
and yarn
to update Node packages to the latest, a specific version, and the latest stable.
Hopefully, you've found this post useful and enjoyed reading it.
Happy coding!
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