Authenticate npm private registry in docker

Question

We're publishing scoped js packages to a private registry (managed by us using Verdaccio).

It means that in our production environment, we need to authenticate to our private registry to use yarn install. What's the easiest way to do it ?

Answer 1

The prettier solution (IMO)

Switch to yarn berry (yarn v2)

Migration guide

Use environment variables in .yarnrc.yml :

yarnPath: ".yarn/releases/yarn-berry.cjs"
nodeLinker: node-modules
npmScopes:
  customScope:
    npmRegistryServer: ${NPM_REGISTRY}
    npmAlwaysAuth: true
    npmAuthToken: ${NPM_TOKEN}

Set environment variable values

#docker-compose.yml
version: '3.7'
services:
  server:
    image: node:14
    environment:
      NPM_REGISTRY=https://private-registry
      NPM_TOKEN=PUT_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/app
    command: "yarn run dev"

You can also put env vars in a .env file and add it to .gitignore

Tests

1. Add a scoped package

   docker-compose run --rm server yarn add @customScope/test-package

2. Install

   docker-compose run --rm server yarn install

Answer 2

If you can't or don't want to use .env file, but you already have .yarnrc.yml file with your registry url like that:

npmScopes:
  yourScopeName:
    npmRegistryServer: 'https://...'

then you can use yarn config set command to add npmAuthToken key with your token value, for example:

// $REGISTRY_TOKEN is an ARG variable you pass to Docker
ARG REGISTRY_TOKEN

RUN yarn config set 'npmScopes.yourScopeName.npmAuthToken' "$REGISTRY_TOKEN"