TS United: CRA Edition

Building shared code and reinstalling it into all parts of a monorepo (backend, frontend, mobile)? Incrementing version and publishing shared code to NPM on every small change? Wasting time? Forget about it with TS United!

TS United helps one TypeScript project (folder containing a tsconfig.json file) import TypeScript/JavaScript code from any other project, while checking each project's code and resolving imports in each project using that project's tsconfig.json.

Note: CRA Edition is a wrapper around Webpack Edition (@ts-united/webpack), which injects the Webpack Edition into react-scripts's underlying Webpack config and helps you avoid ejecting. If you've ejected your app or are using another runtime, go to the list of editions and choose the edition you need.

Sounds great? Let's get started!

Adding TS United to your Create React App project

Step one: Install the @ts-united/cra package from NPM into your main (aka root) project. Root project is the project you'll run npm start in when starting the whole app. For example, the frontend part of your app will be a root project.

Step two: Create a configuration file for TS United in your root project's base directory

Config file can be in either JS or JSON format and can have the following file names:

• ts-united.config.{js,json}
• ts-united.{js,json}
• .tsunitedrc.{js,json}
• .unitedrc.{js,json}

Example - ts-united.config.js

See the Config options section below for complete explanation of config options. It also shows an example config file.

Step three: Use TS United binary for starting and building your code

In root project's package.json file use tsu-cra binary to start, build and test your code.

Note: Testing is currently not supported, because it uses Jest runtime, which needs it's own edition. Jest Edition will be added soon!

Example:

{
    // ...regular package.json
    "scripts": {
        "start": "tsu-cra start",
        "build": "tsu-cra build",
        "test": "tsu-cra test"
        // ...some other scripts
    }
}

tsu-cra binary usage: tsu-cra <one of react scripts: start, build or test>

That's all! Now your project uses TS United! Import files from other projects and then run npm start and npm run build as usual.

Tip: Any project can import any other project, listed in config file. Related projects can import each other and can import root project (importing root project from related projects is not recommended).

Also you can see a complete example project on GitHub: https://github.com/R-Mielamud/TsUnited/tree/main/example/cra-frontend

Config options

| Option | Data type | Default value | Description | | ----------------- | -------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | cwd | string(path)? | path.dirname(path_of_ts_united_config_file) | CWD is a base directory for all other directories in config. It can be either absolute or relative. If it's relative, it'll be relative to path.dirname(path_of_ts_united_config_file). | | extensions | Array<string(file extension)>? | [".js", ".jsx", ".ts", ".tsx", ".json"] | Array of extensions path aliases will be implicitly resolved to. | | rootProject | Project | | Root project's info (see Project schema below). | | relatedProjects | Array<Project>? | [] | Array containing related projects' info. If empty, no projects will be considered related. |

Project schema

| Option | Data type | Default value | Description | | ------------ | -------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | name | string, unique | | Any unique project name (id). | | path | string(path) | | The path tsconfig.json file is located in or any child path. Importing files that are outside all projects' paths is forbidden. The path can be absolute or relative to CWD. | | extensions | Array<string(file extension)>? | The top-level extensions option | Array of extensions path aliases of this project will be implicitly resolved to. Each extension must begin with a dot. |

Example folder structure and config:

|---myproject
    |---shared
        |--- ...
        |---tsconfig.json
    |---frontend - the root project
        |--- ...
        |---ts-united.config.js
        |---tsconfig.json
    |---tsconfig.base.json

// /myproject/frontend/ts-united.config.js
// path.dirname("/myproject/frontend/ts-united.config.js") === "/myproject/frontend"

module.exports = {
    cwd: "../", // /myproject
    extensions: [".ts", ".tsx"], // `~/myfile` can become either `./myfile.ts` or `./myfile.tsx`
    rootProject: {
        name: "frontend",
        path: "./frontend", // /myproject/frontend
        extensions: [".ts", ".tsx"], // Set to default value
    },
    relatedProjects: [
        {
            name: "shared",
            path: "./shared", // /myproject/shared
        },
    ],
};