Express with Typescript starter explained (fast)

#typescript #node #javascript #npm

If you are reading this, I think you should know Typescript & Express, so let's go through this, and build something from scratch !

Before start

Let's start by checking if node is currently installed

node -v

Install typescript (globally) if not installed

npm install -g typescript

Initialization

So let's begin ! First of all, use npm init in order to create package.json !

So basically what are we needing ? We need to install express, install and configure typescript packages, and install @types package linked to the previous packages. We also need to install ts-node in order to build typescript file in nodejs

So let's do this

npm i express

npm i -D typescript ts-node @types/node @types/express

Init config typescript

tsc --init

Create two folders:

src/ (will contains all ts files)
dist/ (will contains all builded files (js files))

Start

In order to start our project, we will use nodemon in order to watch any changes in *.ts files and re-build it automatically.

npm i -D nodemon

Create command to execute code

  "scripts": {
    "dev": "nodemon src/app.ts"
  },

Create app.ts file in src/ like bellow :

import express, { Application, Request, Response } from 'express'

const app: Application = express()

const port: number = 3001

app.get('/toto', (req: Request, res: Response) => {
    res.send('Hello toto')
})

app.listen(port, function () {
    console.log(`App is listening on port ${port} !`)
})