I wanted to know if there is any clean way of preventing package.json file from updating to latest versions of the dependencies that it contains.
The reason I don't want them to update is because of I need to frequently run few scripts with certain libraries the project contains and if the libraries get updated to latest versions, then I may not be able to validate my tests if some additional transitive dependencies are present.
Please note: I am not using npm update in any case, but I do use npm install.
See this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41003507/4236831
You can specify the exact version in your package.json file.
A more detailed overview of managing the versions of your dependencies can be found here: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/configuring-npm/package-json#dependencies