Using NPM modules in Meteor

I've been seeing a lot of people being confused about using NPM modules in Meteor recently. As you may know, Meteor added support for this in v0.6.0. And it's very easy. Onward!

Let's use the foobar NPM module. Gotta love the classics! First, create a packages directory in the root of your Meteor project, which can store all of the NPM modules you want to use. Inside that, create a foobar directory.

We'll add two files to the /packages/foobar directory. Firstly, the package.js file. If you've made or looked at a Meteor/Meteorite smart package, this will look familiar, with one addition. So:

Npm.depends({
    'foobar': 'x.x.x' // Where x.x.x is the version, e.g. 0.3.2
});

Package.on_use(function (api) {
    api.add_files('foobar.js', 'server'); // Or 'client', or ['server', 'client']
});

Now that we've specified the module and version and the files we want from the module and where to include them (whew), let's make another file! Remember I said there would be two? We can call this one foobar.js or something.

Foobar = Npm.require("foobar");

I love one-liners too. And that's it! Now you can use Foobar in your code.