Newbie to Node.Js and NPM

Wanting to create a project using node.js over christmas, and am using a tutorial from this months .Net magazine to help me out. Written by Henrik Joretag I thought it would be simple enough, but I seem to have hit a problem at the first hurdle.

On writing a package.json file, I then try to run it. I am greeted with the following error.

error TypeError: Cannot call method 'replace' of undefined
error     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-    json.js:332:45
error     at fs.js:117:20
error     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/graceful-fs/graceful-fs.js:53:5
error     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/graceful-fs/graceful-fs.js:62:5
error     at Object.oncomplete (fs.js:297:15)

I am completely lost on how to configure this as the tutorial has stated that after creating a package.json file it should just work. My package.json looks like this.

{
    "name": "sample-dashboard.iwishiwaschucknorris.com",
    "version" : "0.0.1",
    "homepage" : "http://sample-dashboard.iwishiwaschucknorris.com",
    "description" : "Mind-meldification for teams",
    "dependencies" : {
        "backbone" : "",
        "underscore" : "",
        "express" : "",
        "stitch" : "",
        "andbang-express-auth" : "",
        "precommit-hook" : "",
        "clientmodules" : "",
        "templatizer" : "",
        "andlog" : "",
        "getconfig" : "",
        "connect-githead" : ""
    },
    "clientmodules" : ["andlog","backbone","underscore"],
    "main" : "server.js",
    "scripts" : {
        "postinstall" : "node node_modules/clientmodules/install.js"
    }
}

Any help with this would be great as I really want to get my teeth into node and backbone.js.

I had this same issue.

Based on this post, I found that I had done a git init but needed to go a bit further for npm to be happy.

I went ahead and did a git add . and a git commit -m "<msg>" in the directory to get my first commit recorded in the git metadata. I then reran the npm install and all was well.

Maybe you just don't run npm install from within the directory of package.json, which will install locally all the dependencies declared in package.json, and run the postinstall script.

This is probably an old npm bug we fixed recently. npm update -g npm and you'll be all set. (it happens when there's a .git but no git HEAD)