Multiple commands in package.json
node.jspackage.jsonnode.js Problem Overview
This command: "start": "node server/server.js" starts my server, but before running this I also want a command to run automatically:
'webpack'.
I want to build a script that can be run with
npm run someCommand - it should first run webpack in the terminal, followed by node server/server.js.
(I know how configure this with gulp, but I don't want to use it)
node.js Solutions
Solution 1 - node.js
If I understood you correctly, you want firstly run webpack and after compile run nodejs. Maybe try this:
"start": "webpack && node server/server.js"
Solution 2 - node.js
The following should work:
"start": "webpack && node server/server.js"
Though, for readability (and especially if you plan on adding additional tasks in the future), you may want to consider creating separate entries for each task and then calling each of those from start. Something like:
{
"init-assets": "webpack",
"init-server": "node server/server.js",
"start": "npm run init-assets && npm run init-server"
}
Solution 3 - node.js
You can also chain commands like this:
"scripts": {
"clean": "npm cache clean --force",
"clean:complete": "npm run clean && npm uninstall -g @angular/cli && rmdir /Q /S node_modules",
"clean:complete:install": "npm run clean:complete && npm i -g @angular/cli && npm i && npm install --save-dev @angular/cli@latest"
}
Solution 4 - node.js
Also, along with the accepted answer and @pdoherty926's answer, in case you want to have run two command prompts, you can add "start" before each command:
{
"init-assets": "webpack",
"init-server": "node server/server.js",
"start": "start npm run init-assets && start npm run init-server"
}
Solution 5 - node.js
Better understand the && operator
In my case the && didn't worked well because I had a package command that was killing previous instance of my server and returned 1 (error) if the server didn't already exists and 0 (success) if it was existing AND the && chaining operator works only if first command succeeds.
So, to add to other answers here are the options you get to separate commands:
&&run second command after and only if first succeeds||run second command after and only if first fails
So if you want the second command to run whatever the first has outputted the best way is to do something like (command1 && command2) || command 2
OS specific chaining operators
Other options are different in unix (linux, macos) and windows environnement
;UNIX run second command after whatever the first command outputted;WIN separate command arguments&UNIX run first command in the background parallel to the second one&WIN run second command after whatever the first command outputted