Use 3rd party packages in Node REPL

Question

I'm trying to play with d3 (and successfully did earlier somehow?) in node. So I did

npm install -g d3

which works great. Let's check:

$ npm list -g d3
/usr/local/lib
└── [email protected] 

great. Let's make sure I have the package right:

$ grep name /usr/local/lib/node_modules/d3/package.json 
  "name": "d3",

Great. So try to require it:

$ node

 var d3 = require('d3');
 Error: Cannot find module 'd3'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:338:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:280:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:364:17)
    at require (module.js:380:17)
    at repl:1:10
    at REPLServer.self.eval (repl.js:110:21)
    at repl.js:249:20
    at REPLServer.self.eval (repl.js:122:7)
    at Interface.<anonymous> (repl.js:239:12)
    at Interface.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:95:17)

Nope! What gives?

Answer 1

You can't require() globally installed modules by default (without mucking with special environment variables and such). If you instead do npm install d3, require('d3') should work from the REPL within the current working directory.