How to get a composer/npm project onto production webserver?

I've searched the web but I've not really found an answer which I am happy with...

If I'm ready with a project which uses npm or composer to upload it onto a webserver how excactly do I "export" it to the webserver. Because you normally you dont upload the complete node_modules directory to the webspace because you don't have to waste the space with development files e.g. demos or something. So you can upload just the needed files onto the webserver but what is with the links and with a big project this would also mean a lot of work grabbing out just the files you need.

So what should I do?