How To Use Private Repo as NPM Dependency

In the last few days I have been working a lot on some private projects. For confidentiality reasons I can’t use public repositories, consequently not even the free version of NPM for dependency management. As a result I had to find a way to handle private dependencies.

I’ll start by saying one thing: the optimal solution is to use the pro version of NPM (all in all it costs little, 7 dollars a month). But if you don’t have the possibility to do so, you can create a library directly on GitHub, leaving the repository private and creating an access token for access via NPM.

{
  "dependencies": {
    "package-name": "git+https://<username>:<access_token>@github.com/username/repository#{branch|tag}"
  }
}

This way you can install the library as if it were an npm package. To Create Personal Access Token on GitHub, from your GitHub account, go to Settings → Developer Settings → Personal Access Token → Generate New Token (Give your password) → Fillup the form → click Generate token → Copy the generated Token, it will be something like ghp_sFhFsSHhTzMDreGRLjmks4Tzuzgthdvfsrta

A second alternative, which does not require entering the plaintext token, is to add an SSH key to the git client:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "package-name": "git+ssh://git@github.com:username/repository.git#{branch|tag}"
  }
}

To manage access token you can follow this answer on StackOverflow.

For Windows you can go to Credential Manager from Control Panel → Windows Credentials → find git:https://github.com → Edit → On Password replace with with your GitHub Personal Access Token → You are Done

If you don’t find git:https://github.com → Click on Add a generic credential → Internet address will be git:https://github.com and you need to type in your username and password will be your GitHub Personal Access Token → Click Ok and you are done