Installing TypeScript

This is a skeleton app for people who want to use TypeScript in ExpressJS. A docker-compose file is included for those who want to run it in a container.

You don't have to use the docker-compose file if you're fine with installing NodeJS and NPM locally. Feel free to delete it if that's the case.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have NodeJS installed (preferably the LTS version). This will also install npm. For Windows users you might consider Chocolaty and for Mac users obviously Brew. These are both package managers that will help you install and update all kinds of packages via the CLI. Highly recommended.

1. Open a terminal window (command prompt, git bash, powershell)
2. Check if NodeJS is installed by typing node --version into the terminal. It should print a line with something like v18.18.0.
3. Check if NPM is installed by typing npm --version into the terminal. It should print a line with something like 9.8.0.

Instructions

1. Clone or download this repository to your computer
2. Open a terminal in the project directory.
3. Install the dependencies by running npm install.
4. Compile the project by running npm run build. If you want to run the build script everytime you make changes automatically, you can use npm run watch.
5. Run the application. You cannot just open the index.html file (see the following section). If everything worked properly, you should see "Hello World" printed to the document.

Recommended VS Code Extension

• To use the provided .editorconfig file, install the EditorConfig plugin.
• To use the provided .eslintrc.cjs file, install the ESLint plugin.

Using Docker

If you're like me and you dislike NodeJS and NPM piling up heaps of folders on your pc, run TypeScript in Docker!

1. Install Docker Desktop.
2. Open a terminal window (Powershell on Windows, regular command prompt will not work).
3. Clone this repository.
4. Move to this folder inside the terminal.
5. Run docker-compose up and open a new terminal OR run docker-compose up -d which allows you to work in the same terminal.
6. Follow the steps from Instructions from step 4, but prefix all the commands with docker-compose exec ts-app.
7. Close the docker container by pressing ctrl + c or docker-compose down, respectively for step 5

Running the project

Running In the package.json you can see which commands (in scripts) are used to run or build the server.

• npm run dev: in the dev environment we use this command to actually compile the TS code
• npm run build: before the dev environment becomes the production environment we use this command
• npm run start: in production we use this command the start a server in production
• npm run start_ts: in development we use this command the start a server in with typescript files

One note on running the command npm run start. We use nodemon to monitor the node server and to restart the server automatically. If we use node start.js we have to restart the server ourselves. You could install the nodemon package globally, but in this repo we installed it locally. On Windows it might be a problem to execute the npm run dev win command because of some security reasons. You probably have to execute the following command Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned. If you want to learn more about these policies please read the Microsoft documentation.

Modules

We use ES6 module system to import and export modules.

Variables.env

We save credentials to other services in a variables.env file. This file is included in this template. However, it is common use not to include it in a public repository. There are some default key value pairs included to demonstrate its working.

Ports

You can change the ports of your server via variables.env

Run TS directly via Nodemon

We choose to compile TS to JS and run the compiled JS to test it. However it is possible to run typescript in express Nodemon and TS

For setting up the TS we used this source