If you have a local Node.js file that does something, it's very easy to run:
node path/to/file.js
However, if you have a remote file on a URL, say https://example.com/script.js, you have several steps before you can get your desired output in your terminal:
- Download script.js (using
curl
, for example) to a directory - Create a
package.json
file to make sure it runs - Check if it has any external dependencies
- Install external dependencies (using
npm install
, for example) - Use
node script.js
to execute it
This is too much of work, especially if you want to get started quickly. So, introducing run-url: an open-source npm remote URL runner written in TypeScript.
Now, you can just run the URL using npx
, just like you're used to:
npx run-url https://example.com/script.js
You can also install run-url
globally:
npm install --global run-url
And it'll be available in your terminal:
run-url https://example.com/script.js
Running GitHub Gists with Node.js
If you quickly want to prototype, a great way is to create a GitHub Gist. For example, I have the following: https://gist.github.com/AnandChowdhary/3c0400b29a18a2afff7a23e2a3308c22#file-log-moment-js, which has a dependency (moment
) and outputs the current date.
Simply copy the raw URL of the gist file and run it:
npx run-url https://gist.githubusercontent.com/AnandChowdhary/3c0400b29a18a2afff7a23e2a3308c22/raw/8ab3ca87821511e580d72585c72736b833d18697/log-moment.js
run-url
will install the required dependency (in this case, moment
) in a temporary folder, run the Node.js file, and then remove the temporary folder. Just like npx
, it just works.
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