m13-typescript-transformer-append-js-extension

A TypeScript transformer for use with ttypescript that will append the JS extension to all relative imports that have no extension.


License
Unlicense
Install
npm install m13-typescript-transformer-append-js-extension@1.0.2

Documentation

This is a fork of https://github.com/Zoltu/typescript-transformer-append-js-extension with an update to get rid of

DeprecationWarning: 'createLiteral' has been deprecated since v4.0.0.

which has begun to break the ttypescript/typescript compiler with

Error: Debug Failure. Unhandled SyntaxKind: ImportClause.

Abstract

Teach the TypeScript compiler to emit JavaScript files that can be run natively in the browser using es2015 module syntax.

Motivation

Browsers now support loading modules natively, without needing to rely on bundlers. However, unlike in NodeJS, the browser cannot try a bunch of different paths to find a file, it must fetch the correct file in a single standard HTTP request on the first try. This means that when you do import { Foo } from './foo', the browser will try to fetch a file at the path http://my-domain/path/foo. Unless you configure your HTTP server to serve up JS files when no extension is provided, the web server will likely not find any file at that path because the actual file lives at http://my-domain/path/foo.js. One potential solution to this problem is to write your TS like import { Foo } from './foo.js'. TypeScript is clever enough that it will realize that you really meant foo.ts during compilation, and it will successfully find type information. However, ts-node is not clever enough to handle these faux paths so if you want a library that works in either ts-node or browser you are out of luck.

The hope is that eventually TypeScript will add support for appending the .js extension as a compiler option, but for the time being we'll have to do it ourself.

Note

If your project includes files with . in the filename (e.g., my.modules.tests.ts), you probably want to use https://github.com/nvandamme/typescript-transformer-append-js-extension instead, which has a bit more complex logic for deciding when to append the extension and when not to. Instructions/usage are the same, just change @zoltu/typescript-transformer-append-js-extension to @nvandamme/typescript-transformer-append-js-extension in the two places below.

Usage

  1. Install typescript, ttypescript, and this transformer into your project if you don't already have them.
    npm install --save-dev typescript
    npm install --save-dev ttypescript
    npm install --save-dev @zoltu/typescript-transformer-append-js-extension
    
  2. Add the transformer to your es2015 module tsconfig-es.json (or whatever tsconfig.json you are using to build es2015 modules)
    // tsconfig-es.json
    {
    	"compilerOptions": {
    		"module": "es2015",
    		"plugins": [
    			{
    				"transform": "@zoltu/typescript-transformer-append-js-extension/output/index.js",
    				"after": true,
    			}
    		]
    	},
    }
  3. Write some typescript with normal imports
    // foo.ts
    export function foo() { console.log('foo') }
    // index.ts
    import { foo } from './foo'
    foo()
  4. Compile using ttsc
    npx ttsc --project tsconfig-es.json