List globally installed npm modules programatically

Question

How do I get a list of all globally installed npm packages using the npm.commands.ls command?

Answer 1

First, you have to have npm installed locally(npm i npm -S). Second, you need to do npm.load to initialize npm. Finally you can just use npm.commands.ls to get the list. What is important is to add the global: true and depth: 0 parameters into the load function.

var npm = require('npm')

npm.load({
    loaded: false,
    progress: false,
    loglevel: 'error',
    global: true,
    depth: 0
}, () => {
    npm.commands.ls([], true, (err, data) => {
        console.log(Object.keys(data.dependencies))
    })
})