node.js - npm - save installed packages as dependencies

Question

I've installed some packages via npm install $package, without setting up a package.json first. Now I would like to create a package.json file, but keep all installed packages as dependencies. Simply running npm init doesn't offer this option, can I achieve this automatically?

Answer 1

Update January 2016

npm now supports this out of the box. I have npm version 3.5.2.

so with just a node_modules folder with underscore installed.

npm init --yes

then:

cat package.json

Contained within package.json:

"dependencies": {
    "underscore": "^1.8.3"
  },