Purpose of installing Twitter Bootstrap through npm?

Question

Question 1:

What exactly is the purpose of installing Twitter Bootstrap through npm? I thought npm was meant for server side modules. Is it faster to serve the bootstrap files yourself than using a CDN?

Question 2:

If I were to npm install Bootstrap, how would I point to the bootstrap.js and bootstrap.css files?

Answer 1

If you NPM those modules you can serve them using static redirect.

First install the packages:

npm install jquery
npm install bootstrap

Then on the server.js:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

// prepare server
app.use('/api', api); // redirect API calls
app.use('/', express.static(__dirname + '/www')); // redirect root
app.use('/js', express.static(__dirname + '/node_modules/bootstrap/dist/js')); // redirect bootstrap JS
app.use('/js', express.static(__dirname + '/node_modules/jquery/dist')); // redirect JS jQuery
app.use('/css', express.static(__dirname + '/node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css')); // redirect CSS bootstrap

Then, finally, at the .html:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/bootstrap.min.css">
<script src="/js/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

I would not serve pages directly from the folder where your server.js file is (which is usually the same as node_modules) as proposed by timetowonder, that way people can access your server.js file.

Of course you can simply download and copy & paste on your folder, but with NPM you can simply update when needed... easier, I think.