[RRFC] "npm pkg get <value> --raw" to get raw unquoted values for further use in scripts

[ThePlenkov]

Current behavior

One of the most popular use cases for pkg get command is getting values for other scripts as variables. However currently it's returning the value with quotes:

npm pkg get version 
"4.12.2"

The current solution is to use it in a pipe and remove quotes somehow with sed or jq.:
Example:

nx build app version=$(npm pkg get version | jq -r)

However it comes with some cons:

• It's not cross-platform
• Requires additional packages installation
• Code looks more complicated
• No unique de-facto standard

Desired Behaviour

To introduce --raw/-r flag for npm pkg get command
Thus, for the following command we will expect the raw value:

npm pkg get version --raw
4.12.2

So the previous example would look like :

nx build app version=$(npm pkg get version --raw)

References

It's a simple case but you can see how much discussion about this topic:
https://gist.github.com/DarrenN/8c6a5b969481725a4413
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9153571/is-there-a-way-to-get-version-from-package-json-in-nodejs-code

[ljharb]

This feature makes sense to me.

[ruyadorno]

This sounds like a good idea! I just believe that what we want here is to add support to --parseable instead of adding a new raw config in the mix.

Just to add some background, there are basically 3 different types of output that the npm cli supports:

• human readable (most often the default, prints things like trees, uses colors, etc)
• json (I believe this is the default for npm pkg get today, prints stringified json output)
• parseable (a more cli-friendly output, separates things with either tabs or colons, supported in npm ls, npm outdated, npm search and more)

That said, maybe this is too small of a feature to afford a full RFC. I can see this being an realatively-easy-to-merge contribution in case someone from the community submits a PR, or else it should be a backlogged item for the npm cli team.

[ljharb]

parseable and a PR sounds great to me :-) hopefully the npm cli team can weigh in.

[bnb]

very much +1 to parsable

[darcyclarke]

Looks good. I'm +1 to npm version --parseable - if someone wants to pick this up & make a PR happen that would be much appreciated (don't think we need a full-blown RFC/conversation about this, as @ruyadorno noted)

[lukekarrys]

Tracking as a feature enhancement in the CLI here: npm/cli#5508