Running Typescript under NodeJS is easy
Create a new main.ts file and put some code inside it
console.log("Hello Typescript under NodeJS");
Install typescript compiler using
npm install typescript
Compile your code (I am assuming Windows file path style)
node_modules\.bin\tsc
And just execute it using NodeJS
node main.js
You should be aware that Typescript assumes your code is executed under a browser and therefore let you use browser specific API. For example, the following code compiles successfully but fails to execute under NodeJS
localStorage.setItem("key", "123");
Fortunately, we can fix that
Add a tsconfig.json file and let Typescript know the appropriate execution context
{ "compilerOptions": { "module": "commonjs", "target": "es5", "sourceMap": true, "lib": ["ES6"] }, "exclude": [ "node_modules" ] }
The lib section tells Typescript what external libraries it should support out of the box. In this case we just want to be able to compile some ES6 APIs
With the new configuration the Typescript compiler now generates the following error
Cannot find name ‘localStorage’
Which is exactly what we want
However, running with above configuration also fails to compile to following valid NodeJS code
console.log("Hello Typescript under NodeJS");
Typescript throws the following error
Cannot find name ‘console’
To fix that you need to install NodeJS typings information using the following command
npm install @types/node
Enjoy, …