It's difficult to provide a definitive answer without examining the contents of the package.json
file. As some comments have pointed out, it's important to ensure that your node
or npm
command can locate and execute your script file.
Context:
Two key concepts to consider are node
and npm
.
1. Node as a runtime:
To run a node script, you'll need to use the node
command within your project directory like this:
node ./folder/to/your-script.js
2. NPM as a package manager:
NPM relies on having a package.json
file in the same directory where commands are executed. Most npm commands require the presence of a package.json
, except for init
which creates the initial file.
Problem:
The error message from running npm start
indicates that a script named "start" is missing in the scripts section of the package.json
.
This suggests confusion between executing scripts directly with node <filename.js>
and using npm commands such as npm run <script>
.
A special case worth noting is npm start
which behaves differently compared to other npm run
commands.
Solution:
To align with your expectations, consider modifying the package.json
as shown below:
You can also define custom aliases for commands in the scripts
block of the package.json
:
"scripts": {
"start": "node ./some-path/to/your-script.js",
"bar": "npm run foo",
"foo": "node ./folder/to/your-script.js"
}
Notice how you can reference sibling aliases within script commands, including non-node commands like git
.
With these changes in your package.json
, you'll be able to execute commands such as npm start
, npm run foo
, or npm run bar
in the project directory.