Rewrite project paths

TLDR: This package helps you write code using imports with ~/src/some/directory/someFile instead of something like ../../../../src/some/directory/someFile.

Motivation

If you're a JavaScript developer then you have probably seen code similar to the following:

// inside src/some/directory/file1.ts
import { doSomething } from '../../../util';

// inside src/some/other/directory/file2.ts
import { doSomething } from '../../../../util';

Relative paths with .. are difficult to read and interpret and it causes inconsistency in import statement when importing the same file from different source files.

The typescript compiler can be configured to support paths that are relative to the project root.

For example, the examples above would become:

// inside src/some/directory/file1.ts
import { doSomething } from '~/src/util';

// inside src/some/other/directory/file2.ts
import { doSomething } from '~/src/util';

The tsconfig.json should be modified to have a paths property similar to the following:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "rootDir": ".",
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "outDir": "dist",
    "paths": {
      "~/*": ["./*"]
    }
  }
}

However, even when you configure typescript to understand these paths, the ~ will still appear in the output *.js files. To fix the output *.js files you will need to rewrite the require(...) statements so that the paths become relative again.

This project exposes two commands:

• rewrite-imports: Rewrites source *.ts files so that paths with import statements using ../ are rewritten to use ~/. You can run this command in directory that contains *.ts so that ugly ../ paths will be rewritten and then can be committed to your source code repository.

• rewrite-requires: Rewrites compiled *.js files so that paths in require statements are rewritten to always use relative paths. You can run this command after compiling typescript files to a target directory.

Installation

npm install -D @philidem/rewrite-relative-paths

yarn add --dev @philidem/rewrite-relative-paths

Usage

Rewrite import statements in source files to use paths relative to project root:

# Using yarn
yarn rewrite-imports --dir .

# Using npm
npm run rewrite-imports --dir .

Rewrite require statements in compiled *.js files to use relative paths:

# Using yarn
yarn rewrite-requires --dir ./dist

# Using npm
npm run rewrite-requires --dir ./dist