Setting up a Node.js project with TypeScript can significantly improve your developer experience by providing static type checking in your code. In this blog, I’ll guide you through the steps to set up a Node.js Express project with TypeScript.
Create your project directory
Create a directory for your project and then navigate to it. In this example the name of our directory is node-ts.
cd node-ts
Initialize the project
Install a new node project with npm init. This will create a package.json file in the root of your project.
Install TypeScript
Install TypeScript as a development dependancy.
Initialize the TypeScript configuration file
Set up your project structure
Create directories for your source (src) and compiled files (dist).
mkdir dist
Install development tools
Install nodemon and ts-node as development dependencies to run and monitor your project.
Configure scripts
Configure a script in the package.json to run your server in development mode.
“dev”: “nodemon –exec ts-node src/server.ts”
}
Configure nodemon
Create a nodemon.json file to configure nodemon to watch the TypeScript files.
“watch”: [“src”],
“ext”: “ts,json”,
“exec”: “ts-node ./src/server.ts”
}
Configure TypeScript
In the tsconfig.json, specify the compiler options and include your source files.
“compilerOptions”: {
“target”: “es2016”,
“module”: “commonjs”,
“rootDir”: “./src”,
“outDir”: “./dist”,
“esModuleInterop”: true,
“forceConsistentCasingInFileNames”: true,
“strict”: true,
“skipLibCheck”: true
},
“include”: [“src/**/*.ts”]
}
Install Express
npm install @types/express –save-dev
Create a simple express server
Create a server.ts file in your src/ directory with the following basic set up for an express server.
const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
app.get(‘/’, (req, res) => {
res.send(‘Hello, TypeScript with Node.js and Express!’);
});
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`Server is running at http://localhost:${port}`);
});
Start the development server
To start the server run the script you configured in your package.json file.
Your Node.js Express with TypeScript project should be up and running now.
