How to write a TypScript package

Folders

This git includes these samples:

• typescript-package: A TypeScript package sample. It can be required by TypeScript or Node.js projects.
• typescript-project: A TypeScript project sample.
• node-project: A Node.js project sample.

typescript-package

You have to build TypeScript package for other projects. We need set up tsconfig.json and package.json.

tsconfig.json

We put a tsconfig.json to tell how to your package compile. It looks like:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "outDir": "dist",
    //...
    "declaration": true
  },
  "files": [
    "src/index.ts"
  ]
}

There are three points:

• files: List the files you want to compile. We can put a entry point index.ts and import all files in index.ts. If you use something like typings, you maybe put the other entry point like typings/index.d.ts
• outDir: Set a path for compiled results. It will be used in package.json.
• declaration: If you want this package support TypeScript for other projects, you have to set it true and output declaration files.

package.json

We have to add some settings to package.json.

{
  "main": "dist/index.js",
  "typings": "dist/index.d.ts",
  "scripts": {
    "prepublish": "tsc"
  }
}

There are also three points:

• main: This is entry point of this npm package. For npm package, it must be a JavaScript application, so we set it to the compiled file.
• typings: This is for other TypeScript projects. We set declaration is true so that it can generate this file.
• prepublish: If you don't want to commit compiled files the git, you can set up this and it will compile before you publish npm.

.gitignore

Do not ignore dist folder, npm will not incldue this fold in publish package.

Try

You can go to node-project and typescript-project. Run following command and they should work fine.

npm install
npm start