Setup

The following instructions will get you up and running with TypeScript so you can try out the examples presented in this tutorial.

Installing the TypeScript compiler

The TypeScript compiler is responsible for converting TypeScript code into JavaScript that can be understood by browsers (or Node.js® on the server).

Installing the command line compiler is as easy as running the following npm command in your terminal:

npm install -g typescript

TypeScript in the editor

Unless you’re using or (which were both written in TypeScript), you’re going to need a syntax highlighting add-on for your code editor, since most editors don’t recognize TypeScript natively (yet).

Here are some syntax highlighting add-ons for some popular editors:

TypeScript playground 🏸

Using a live scratchpad that runs your code immediately as you type and displays the execution results, can be extremely helpful when learning TypeScript. Here are a few options:

`tsconfig.json`

The presence of a tsconfig.json file in a directory indicates that the directory is the root of a TypeScript project. Its purpose is to specify the compiler options and files required by the project.

For example:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es2016",
    "module": "esnext",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "strictNullChecks": true,
    "noImplicitAny": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "noUnusedParameters": true,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "noEmit": true
  },
  "include": [
    "./config/typescript/**/*",
    "./app/**/*",
    "./client/**/*",
    "./server/**/*",
    "./packages/**/*",
    "./tests/**/*"
  ],
  "exclude": [
    "./node_modules/**/*",
    "./packages/@shopify/*/node_modules/**/*"
  ]
}

Details

The "include" and "exclude" properties take a list of glob-like file patterns.

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Last updated 6 years ago