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We have a nodejs project running on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk that uses private modules that we host using nodejitsu's private npm registry.

However getting access to the private npm registry from the elastic instances hasn't been straightforward and is not documented well.

What is the best way to get this access set up?

Vignir Hafsteinsson
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6 Answers6

21

None of the other answers were working for me. After hours of hair pulling, we finally figured it out. The solution that worked is almost the same as the other answers but with a very minor tweak.

  1. Set an NPM_TOKEN environment variable on Elastic Beanstalk under Configuration > Software Configuration > Environment Properties.
  2. Create a .ebextensions/npm.config file. (The name does not have to be 'npm'.)

  3. Put this content into the file:

    files:
  "/tmp/.npmrc":
    content: |
      //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}

Note that it uses ${NPM_TOKEN} and not $NPM_TOKEN. This is vital. Using $NPM_TOKEN will not work; it must have the curly braces: ${NPM_TOKEN}.

Why are the curly braces needed? No idea. In shell/POSIX languages, ${VAR} and $VAR are synonymous. However, in .npmrc files (at the time of this writing), variables without the curly brackets are not recognized as variables, so npm must be using a slightly different syntax standard.

UPDATE

Also, this has worked for us only on new or cloned environments. For whatever reason, environments which were not initialized with a /tmp/.npmrc will not read it in any future deployments before running npm install --production. We've tried countless methods on 4 different apps, but cloning and replacing an environment has been the only method which has worked.

GreenRaccoon23
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  • `${NPM_TOKEN}` never gets replaced by its value. It is set in the environment variable. Is there which neds to be done? – azhar22k Mar 13 '18 at 07:22
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    `/tmp/.npmrc` will not contain the real token string literally, just `${NPM_TOKEN}`. The environment variable `NPM_TOKEN` will hold the real token string. The `${...}` syntax tells npm to look up the value of the environment variable. So, as long as the EB environment has an environment variable whose name is `NPM_TOKEN` and whose value is the npm token, and the file created by the ebextension (`/tmp/.npmrc`) includes `..._authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}`, npm will be able to make the connection. Hopefully that helps. – GreenRaccoon23 Mar 13 '18 at 22:39
  • This one works for me as I'm using private packages from NPM registry. – Jose May 25 '18 at 00:16
  • Can't seem to get this to work. Is the `//` intentionally commenting this out? @GreenRaccoon23 – Matt Weber Feb 25 '20 at 21:56
  • No, the `//` isn't supposed to be a comment. It's the beginning of a url with the protocol unspecified. Replacing it with `https://` would also work and is probably a good idea anyway. – GreenRaccoon23 Feb 26 '20 at 17:50
  • In my last comment, I said that `//` could be replaced with `https://`. I was wrong; I am encountering issues if I use `https://` instead of `//`. – GreenRaccoon23 Feb 27 '20 at 17:38
10

So, we managed to get this working by using the npm userconfig file. See the doc page for npmrc for more info.

When a nodejs application is being deployed to Elastic Beanstalk, the root user runs npm install. So you will need to write the root's npm userconfig file, which is at /tmp/.npmrc.

So if you add a file called private_npm.config (or whatever name you choose) to your .ebextensions folder with all the information needed, you will be good to go. See Customizing and Configuring AWS Elastic Beanstalk Environments for more info.

So here is what my file looks like to use nodejitsu private registry.

.ebextensions/private_npm.config: 

files:
  #this is the npm user config file path
  "/tmp/.npmrc":
    mode: "000777"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      _auth = <MY_AUTH_KEY>
      always-auth = true
      registry = <PATH_TO_MY_REGISTRY>
      strict-ssl = true
      email = <NPM_USER_EMAIL>
Vignir Hafsteinsson
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  • A trivial addendum: nodejs is the user that runs npm... but the home dir. is correct : /tmp .... root's home is /root – Rondo Jan 09 '15 at 06:19
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    Late to see this, but thanks! I'd add that can use `_authToken` as well. Generate a token using `npm login` and retrieve the token from `~/.npmrc`. – Fissure King Dec 03 '15 at 22:33
3

Using an .npmrc within the project also works. For example...

.npmrc

registry=https://npm.mydomain.com

You may want to .gitignore this file if you include an _authToken line but make sure you don't .ebignore it so it's correctly bundled up with each deployment. After trying a few things unsuccessfully, I came across this post which made me realize specifying it locally in a project is possible.

Greg Venech
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  • Just wanted to add that this worked perfectly for me and helped me when I was barking up the wrong tree looking for a solution. I have a CI/CD solution where CodeBuild runs tests, lints and creates the artifact for Elastic Beanstalk. In this case it was much better to let the build step create an .npmrc file and add it to the root of the zip artifact than write one during the Elastic Beanstalk deployment. – Henrik Hansson Mar 03 '20 at 07:21
2

The answer above as a step in the right direction, but the permissions and owner did not work for me. Managed to get it to work with the following combination:

files:
  #this is the npm user config file path
  "/tmp/.npmrc":
    mode: "000600"
    owner: nodejs
    group: nodejs
    content: |
      _auth = <MY_AUTH_KEY>
      always-auth = true
      registry = <PATH_TO_MY_REGISTRY>
      strict-ssl = true
      email = <NPM_USER_EMAIL>
Frederic Maheu
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2

Place the below within your .ebextensions/app.config.

files:
  "/tmp/.npmrc":
    mode: "000777"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=$NPM_TOKEN

Where NPM_TOKEN is an environment variable with the value of your actual npmjs auth token.

Note that environment variables within elasticbeanstalk can and should be set from within the AWS console Elasticbeanstalk software configuration tab.

AWS Elasticbeanstalk Configuration

minessis
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0

With modern platforms, you no longer need to do this via .ebextensions

You can simply create a .npmrc file at the root of your deployment package, alongside your package.json with the following line:

//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}

Using this method, you can create an environment variable named NPM_TOKEN in your AWS console so you don't have to store the token in your repo.

Structure:

~/your-app/
|-- package.json
|-- .npmrc
Mike Richards
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