Prerequisites

Make sure you have Node.js installed on your machine.

Step 1: Initialize Your Node.js Project

First, let's initialize a new Node.js project. Open your terminal and navigate to your project directory. Then, run the following command:

npm init -y

This command will create a package.json file with default values.

Step 2: Install Dependencies

Next, let's install TypeScript and Express as dependencies, and tsc-watch as a dev dependency. Run the following commands:

npm install typescript express
npm install tsc-watch -D


Step 3: Initialize TypeScript Configuration

TypeScript needs a configuration file to define how it should compile our code. We can generate this configuration file by running:

npx tsc --init

This command will create a tsconfig.json file in your project directory.

Step 4: Configure TypeScript

Open tsconfig.json and make the following changes:

Here, we set outDir to ./build to specify where the compiled JavaScript files should be outputted, and rootDir to ./src to indicate where our TypeScript files are located.

Step 5: Create Project Structure

Now, let's create the directory structure for our project:

mkdir src

Step 6: Create Your Application

Inside the src directory, create your TypeScript files. For example, let's create an index.ts file:

Step 7: Configure npm Scripts

Open your package.json file and add the following scripts:

Step 8: Run Your Application

You're all set! To start your Node.js server, run the following command:

npm run dev

Now, your TypeScript code will be automatically compiled to JavaScript and your Node.js server will be up and running on port 8000.

Conclusion

In this guide, we've learned how to set up TypeScript with Node.js to build powerful server-side applications. By leveraging TypeScript's static typing, we can write more maintainable and error-free code, leading to a better development experience.

Happy coding!

Github link: https://github.com/NegativE333/nodejs-typescript-boilerplateClick here