What is Bower ?

Bower is actually labeled as a package manager. It is used to manage anything which is considered as part of website components in the form of libraries, assets, frameworks, utilities among the others. For an example, it can library such as JQuery, JQuery plugins and then assets like Bootstrap CSS or even framework such as Javascript Framework like Angular. It is actually quite helpful since it is fetching and downloading packages needed from certain location by looking for it, searching the right one and finally downloading it to the host where it needed. It can be a burden to do it as a repetitive task where bower handle all the cycle of doing it so it can be very helpful.

How to use Bower ?

To be able to use bower, since it is actually a command which is executed in a CLI (Command Line Interface)’s environment, a CLI tool is definitely needed to use bower. So, in the terminal or in any interface which is providing command line, bower can be executed. Before, it can actually be called, bower must be installed in the host where bower is going to be executed. Another prerequisite which is needed in order to use bower is the availability of npm installed in the host where bower is going to be used. In this context, ‘npm’ itself is needed to install bower.

How to install Bower ?

Bower can be installed with the help of another dependency manager tool called npm. If npm or node package module has already been installed, just use it to be able to install bower. Bower itself must be installed in the root folder of a web-based application. So, execute the command for installing bower inside the root folder of a web-based application. After finishing on installing bower, just type ‘bower’ in the exact place or location where the command installation for bower is executed, it is done to check whether bower has already installed successfully or not. Read the article titled ‘How to Install bower with Example via Command Line’ in this link.

How to install a package using Bower ?

After installing bower, the next step is to install a package which is needed by a web-based application. Bower is managing the dependency of the package needed by the web-based application in a file name bower.json. It is usually located in the root folder of the web-based application folder. To be able to create the file, just initialize bower in the web-based application so that bower will be associated or introduced as the dependency package manager for the web-based application intended.