It might be a »no-brainer« in case you are working within the Node.js environment for a while. But I used to ask myself how to figure out if there are updates to my dependencies / devDependencies which are beyond the patch-level updates which are »automatically« installed via the definition within my `package.json`. Because I don’t like to check possible updates separately for every module I’m using in my project.

Fortunately there is a node module which can handle that for all dependencies within your project and even all your globale modules. It’s called npm-check-updates and will also update your package.json file if you like to. So updating becomes »fun« again :smile:

Using this is pretty straight forward. First you need to install the package globally with:

npm install -g npm-check-updates

Then use the modules cli without any option to check available updates within your projects root directory:

npm-check-updates

This will show you all possible updates without changing anything:

"superb" can be updated from ^1.0.5 to ^1.1.1 (Installed: 1.0.5, Latest: 1.1.1)
"mocha" can be updated from ^2.0.1 to ^2.1.0 (Installed: 2.0.1, Latest: 2.1.0)
"should" can be updated from ^4.4.2 to ^4.6.1 (Installed: 4.4.2, Latest: 4.6.1)

Run 'npm-check-updates -u' to upgrade your package.json automatically

If you like to upgrade your projects package.json file just make use of the -u option as mentioned in the output above and fire:

npm install

afterwards. And :boom: … all updates will land on your machine and you’re done.

See the README for more options.