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"