Question

Is there a way to get the version set in the package.json file in a Node.js application? I would want something like this

var port = process.env.PORT || 3000
app.listen port
console.log "Express server listening on port %d in %s mode %s", app.address().port, app.settings.env, app.VERSION

Answer 1

I found that the following code fragment worked best for me. Since it uses require to load the package.json, it works regardless of the current working directory.

var pjson = require('./package.json');
console.log(pjson.version);

A warning, courtesy of @Pathogen:

Doing this with Browserify has security implications.
Be careful not to expose your package.json to the client, as it means that all your dependency version numbers, build and test commands and more are sent to the client.
If you’re building server and client in the same project, you expose your server-side version numbers too.
Such specific data can be used by an attacker to better fit the attack on your server.