Recently, I created a package with the ESLint settings I like to use in my React projects, as I was tired of always having to configure it when I start new React projects. Publishing a NPM package is just a matter of running npm publish on the directory of your package (considering, of course, that you already have an NPM account and is authenticated on your terminal). But I wanted to automatize this publishing everytime I created a new release.

In order to do that, I used the following GitHub Action:

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# File: .github/workflows/npm-publish.yml
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# This workflow will publish a package to NPM when a release is created
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# For more information see: https://help.github.com/actions/language-and-framework-guides/publishing-nodejs-packages
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name: Publish Package to npmjs
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on:
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  release:
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    types: [created]
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jobs:
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  build:
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    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
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    steps:
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      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
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      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
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        with:
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          node-version: 16
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          registry-url: https://registry.npmjs.org/
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      - run: npm publish
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        env:
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          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.NODE_AUTH_TOKEN}}

If you read the YAML file above (that you should put on the .github/workflows/npm-publish.yml directory of your git repository), you should have noted that the environment variable NODE_AUTH_TOKEN should be defined. Create a new automation access token on the control panel of NPM:

1. Access your NPM account and click in "Access tokens":

2. Name your new access token and select the "Automation" type for it:

3. Go to your GitHub repository, click in "Settings > Secrets > Actions > New repository secret", name it as NODE_AUTH_TOKEN and paste the access token you just got from NPM:

4. Create a new release for your package. This should trigger our GitHub Action and publish to NPM.