A lightweight API server to get npm package metadata, resolve the latest versions on server, and batch multiple package resolutions in one request.
NPM registry's API is fairly old and not very efficient. For example, requesting https://registry.npmjs.org/vite will make you download 4.38 MB of data, which represents 36.32 MB of uncompressed JSON data. This is a lot of data to download just to get the latest version of a single package.
Also, if you try to fetch that metadata from the official pacote library, you will end up pulling 118 dependencies, which sums up to 8.48 MB of files saved on your disk.
This project aims to provide a lightweight API server as the proxy, which caches the metadata from the NPM registry and provides a more efficient way to resolve the versions of the packages.
Important
This project is still in the early stage of development. Pin your dependencies on usage, and feedback are greatly welcomed.
An example server is deployed at https://npm.antfu.dev/. You can also deploy your own instance.
curl https://npm.antfu.dev/viteReturns
{
"name": "vite",
"specifier": "latest",
"version": "6.0.6",
"publishedAt": "2024-12-26T02:23:38.440Z",
"lastSynced": 1735331047889
}curl https://npm.antfu.dev/vite@alphaReturns
{
"name": "vite",
"specifier": "alpha",
"version": "6.0.0-alpha.24",
"publishedAt": "2024-09-04T09:15:20.820Z",
"lastSynced": 1735331047889
}curl https://npm.antfu.dev/vite@^2.1.0Returns
{
"name": "vite",
"specifier": "^2.1.0",
"version": "2.9.18",
"publishedAt": "2024-03-24T15:06:20.353Z",
"lastSynced": 1735496799048
}Use + to separate the package specs.
curl https://npm.antfu.dev/vite@alpha+vue+nuxt@~3.11Returns an array of objects:
[
{
"name": "vite",
"specifier": "alpha",
"version": "6.0.0-alpha.24",
"publishedAt": "2024-09-04T09:15:20.820Z",
"lastSynced": 1735496799048
},
{
"name": "vue",
"specifier": "latest",
"version": "3.5.13",
"publishedAt": "2024-11-15T14:48:51.738Z",
"lastSynced": 1735496870654
},
{
"name": "nuxt",
"specifier": "~3.11",
"version": "3.11.2",
"publishedAt": "2024-04-04T16:10:14.223Z",
"lastSynced": 1735496870614
}
]You can pass ?metadata=true to get additional metadata about the package, such as engines, deprecated, etc.
curl https://npm.antfu.dev/versions/vite@^2.1.0?metadata=true{
"name": "vite",
"engines": {
"node": ">=12.2.0"
},
"specifier": "^2.1.0",
"version": "2.9.18",
"publishedAt": "2024-03-24T15:06:20.353Z",
"lastSynced": 1735496799048
}curl https://npm.antfu.dev/versions/viteYou can pass the after query parameter (ISO 8601 date string or timestamp) to only return versions published after a specific point in time.
curl "https://npm.antfu.dev/versions/vite?after=2025-01-01T00:00:00Z"{
"name": "vite",
"specifier": "*",
"distTags": {
"alpha": "6.0.0-alpha.24",
"latest": "6.3.0",
"previous": "4.5.13",
"beta": "6.3.0-beta.2"
},
"lastSynced": 1744845678674,
"versions": [
"6.0.7"
// ...
],
"time": {
"6.0.7": "2025-01-02T19:50:46.030Z"
// ...
}
}curl https://npm.antfu.dev/versions/vite@5{
"name": "vite",
"distTags": {
"previous": "5.2.5",
"alpha": "6.0.0-alpha.18",
"beta": "5.3.0-beta.2",
"latest": "5.3.2"
},
"versions": [
"5.0.0",
"5.0.1",
"5.0.2"
// ...
],
"lastSynced": 1719801079260
}Use + to separate the package names.
curl https://npm.antfu.dev/versions/vite+vue+nuxtThis will responses with an array
Add ?metadata=true to the URL to get additional metadata about each version, such as engines, deprecated, etc.
This would also alter the response format. versions and time will be omitted, and instead a versionsMeta object will be returned.
curl https://npm.antfu.dev/versions/vite?metadata=true{
"name": "vite",
"distTags": {
"previous": "5.2.5",
"alpha": "6.0.0-alpha.18",
"beta": "5.3.0-beta.2",
"latest": "5.3.2"
},
"versionsMeta": {
"5.0.0": {
"version": "5.0.0",
"engines": {
"node": ">=12.0.0"
},
"deprecated": "This version is deprecated"
},
"5.0.1": {
"version": "5.0.1",
"engines": {
"node": ">=12.0.0"
}
}
// ...
},
"lastSynced": 1719801079260
}By default, the endpoint will return 400 or 500 status codes for errors.
If you want to handle the errors in the payload, or retriving partial query result, set ?throw=false in the query string.
curl https://npm.antfu.dev/vite+non-exist?throw=falseIt will return 200 with:
[
{
"name": "vite",
"specifier": "latest",
"version": "6.2.3",
"publishedAt": "2025-03-24T09:51:35.322Z",
"lastSynced": 1743129342678
},
{
"name": "non-exist",
"error": "[GET] \"https://registry.npmjs.org/non-exist\": 404 Not Found"
}
]In the JavaScript API, you can pass throw: false in the option.
You can also use the JavaScript API to resolve the versions.
npm install fast-npm-metaimport { getLatestVersion } from 'fast-npm-meta'
const metadata = await getLatestVersion('vite')
console.log(metadata.version) // 5.3.2The tool does not require any preliminary configuration to work, but you can override some default parameters through environment variables or .env files. The main ones:
| Option | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
PORT |
Port to listen on | 3000 |
HOST |
Host to serve | |
REPO_URL |
Code repository URL | https://github.com/antfu/fast-npm-meta |
CACHE_TIMEOUT |
Cache timeout in ms | 900000 (15m) |
CACHE_TIMEOUT_FORCE |
Cache timeout for forced updates | 30000 (30s) |
REGISTRY_URL |
NPM registry URL | https://registry.npmjs.org |
REGISTRY_USER_AGENT |
User agent for NPM registry requests | get-npm-meta |
For more information, follow the official Nitro guides.
MIT License © 2023-PRESENT Anthony Fu
{ "name": "vite", "distTags": { "previous": "5.2.5", "alpha": "6.0.0-alpha.18", "beta": "5.3.0-beta.2", "latest": "5.3.2" }, "versions": [ "0.1.0", "0.1.1", "0.1.2" // ... ], "lastSynced": 1719801079260 }