How to build a TypeScript server

TL;DR

git clone https://github.com/bourdakos1/typescript-todo.git
yarn install
yarn start

Setup Node and a package manager

If you don't already have Node installed the easiest way to get it is from the Node.js website.

I personally use nvm (or nvm-windows). It is the recommend way to install Node so you can easily switch between different versions.

In order to easily install things, you need a package manager. By default Node comes with npm, but I prefer yarn. You can install yarn with:

npm install -g yarn

Start a project

Create a folder with the name of your project. I named mine typescript-todo.

A Node.js project should have a package.json. This contains all the metadata for your project like its name, homepage, license, etc. It also contains information about the dependencies it requires, and allows you to include useful scripts to be run for tasks like building, testing and linting.

We can create the package.json by hand or run yarn init to interactively generate it for us.

Either way, you should end up with a package.json that looks something like this:

{
  "name": "typescript-todo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {}
}

If your project is open source, you might want to specify more metadata, like license and repository. Check out choosealicense for clear examples on what the different licenses mean and how to choose the right one for your project:

{
  "name": "typescript-todo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "main": "index.js",
  "repository": "https://github.com/bourdakos1/typescript-todo.git",
  "author": "Nick <[email protected]>",
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {}
}

Make sure Node is working

You can skip this section if you're confident your project has been set up properly.

Add a file named index.js:

console.log("hello world")

Then run:

node index.js

You should see hello world printed in the console.

Moving to typescript

First, we need to install typescript as a dev dependency. A dev dependency is a dependency we only need to use while developing our application. In this case, once we compile the production version of our typescript server, we no longer need to use the typescript dependency.

Install typescript as a dev dependency by passing the -D flag:

yarn add -D typescript

Create a tsconfig.json file with the following options:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "outDir": "dist"
  }
}

options

compilerOptions.outDir: Tells the typescript compiler where to dump our compiled code. In this case, it will create a folder named dist and place the compiled files there.

Note: We will update this file again later with some important additional options.

Finally, rename index.js to index.ts in order to make it recognized as a typescript file.

The javascript code that we wrote in index.js is valid typescript, so we don't need to make any other modifications.

To compile our typescript, we will use tsc which is part of the typescript package we install as a dev dependency. To use it, just run:

yarn tsc

You should see a dist folder generated with a single index.js file inside. We can test that it worked, by running:

node dist/index.js

You should see hello word printed in the console like before.

yay our first typescript application 🎉

Setting up a good development environment

In order to have a pleasent development experience, we want to set up things like linting, code formatting, and automatic re-running.

Linting

Linting is your extra set of eyes that never get tired. It will help you catch bugs early and shouldn't get in your way. It will notify you of things like trying to use a variable that hasn't been defined or not using a variable that you did define. Linting is NOT there to yell at you for awkward spacing or for not using trailing commas.

For linting we will be using a package called eslint.

Code formatting

Code formatting is where we handle awkward spacing, missing semicolons and trailing commas. Code formatting doesn't yell at you, it just fixes it. Code formatting is commonly set up so that anytime you save the file, it gets prettified.

For code formatting we will be using a package called prettier.

Automatic re-running

The goal of automatic re-running is that anytime you make a change to your code the output reflects those changes. You shouldn't have to manually kill your server, compile the typescript and then restart your everytime you make a change.

For automatic re-running we will be using a combination of nodemon and ts-node.

Setup linting

To setup linting we need to install the following dev dependencies:

yarn add -D eslint @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin eslint-plugin-openapi

dependencies

eslint: Runs the linting.
@typescript-eslint/parser: A parser that replaces the default eslint parser in order to support typescript.
@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin: A plugin with a set of eslint rules specific to typescript.
eslint-plugin-openapi: A plugin with a set of eslint rules for OpenAPI (we will go over this more later).

We also need to create a file called .eslintrc.json:

{
  "root": true,
  "extends": [
    "eslint:recommended",
    "plugin:@typescript-eslint/recommended",
    "plugin:openapi/recommended"
  ],
  "rules": {
    "prefer-const": "off"
  }
}

options

root: If true, eslint stops looking for eslintrc files in parent directories. It's good practice to have this set in the root of your project.
extends: A list of eslint configs from which to extend. These configs have a recommended set of rules enabled. Additionally @typescript-eslint enables the custom parser we installed.
rules: An optional list of additional rules to turn on/off.

Note: We turned off prefer-const which is a highly debated topic. It requires you to declare a variable with const instead of let if it is never reassigned. Some find this misleading for objects and arrays, because you can still mutate them even if they are const. For example:
const array = []
array.push("hello")
array.push("world")
Some like to declare this with let to indicate that array is mutated:
let array = []
array.push("hello")
array.push("world")

Optionally, in the scripts section of your package.json, add a linting script:

{
 "scripts": {
   "lint": "eslint . --ext .ts"
 }
}

Create an .eslintignore:

node_modules
dist

Setup code formatting

Setting up code formatting is a lot simplier, because prettier is highly opinionated. Simply install it with:

yarn add -DE prettier

Note: The -E flag ensures the exact version of prettier is installed. This is recommended, because prettier installs style updates as patch releases.

and add an empty .prettierrc to your project:

{}

Optionally, in the scripts section of your package.json, add a code formattting script:

{
 "scripts": {
   "pretty": "pettier . --write"
 }
}

Setup vscode

I use (Visual Studio Code)[https://code.visualstudio.com/] for my code editter. If you are also using vscode, I recommend the following extensions to improve your linting and code formatting experience:

(esbenp.prettier-vscode)[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=esbenp.prettier-vscode]
(dbaeumer.vscode-eslint)[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dbaeumer.vscode-eslint]

Setup automatic re-running

For automatic re-running add the following dev dependencies:

yarn add -D ts-node nodemon

dependencies

ts-node: Allows you to run typescript files.
nodemon: Re-runs code whenever it changes.

Add a start script to the scripts section of your package.json:

{
 "scripts": {
   "start": "nodemon --watch src -e ts,yml --exec ts-node src/app.ts"
 }
}

start script breakdown

nodemon
- --watch src: Watch the source folder for changes.
- -e ts,yml: Only re-run when typscript and yaml files change.
- --exec ts-node src/app.ts: The command to run when changes happen.

Setup the project

You might have noticed in the previous step that we told nodemon to watch the src folder. It's a good practice to have a folder that separates your source code from the long list of configuration files.

You can delete the index.ts file if you created one. We are now going to create a new folder called src and add an empty file named app.ts. Your folder structure should look something like this:

 📂 typescript-todo
 ├── 📂 src
 │   └── 📄 app.ts
 ├── 📄 .eslintignore
 ├── 📄 .eslintrc.json
 ├── 📄 .prettierrc
 ├── 📄 package.json
 └── 📄 tsconfig.json

Install the following dependencies that we will use for the project:

yarn add express openapi-comment-parser swagger-ui-express uuid

dependencies

express: A minimal web framework for node.
swagger-ui-express: A tool to serve OpenAPI documentation for our API.
openapi-comment-parser: OpenAPI specification generation from doc comments.
uuid: Generate universally unique IDs.

Since we are using typescript, we also need to install types for packages that weren't written in typescript:

yarn add -D @types/express @types/swagger-ui-express @types/uuid

How do you know which packages need to have types installed?

typescript will yell at you and tell you which ones to install.

Update the typescript config

Update your tsconfig.json as follows:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "strict": true, 
    "module": "commonjs",
    "target": "es2018",
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "outDir": "dist"
  },
  "include": [
    "src/**/*"
  ]
}

options

compilerOptions.strict: Enables a wide range of type checking behavior that results in stronger guarantees of program correctness.
compilerOptions.module: You very likely want "CommonJS".
compilerOptions.target: Recommended targets based on the Node version:
- Node 8 = ES2017
- Node 10 = ES2018
- Node 12 = ES2019
compilerOptions.esModuleInterop: Enables emit interoperability between CommonJS and ES Modules via creation of namespace objects for all imports.
include: An array of filenames or patterns to include in the program. These filenames are resolved relative to the directory containing the tsconfig.json file.

Coding time!

Add the following to app.ts. You might be thinking, this is just javascript... It is! But now we have stronger typing (we'll see some of the benefits of typescript in a bit).

// Import our packages
import express from "express";
import swaggerUi from "swagger-ui-express";
import openapi from "openapi-comment-parser";

// Choose a 4 digit number for our port. With 3000, we can see out server
// running at: http://localhost:3000
const PORT = 3000;

// Initialize express.
const app = express();

// Setup comment parsing to generate our documentation.
// The `{ cwd: __dirname }` option, tells OpenAPI comment parser to start by
// looking in this this `src` directory for comments. Hardcoding directories in
// Node can cause issues when running the project from another directory, it's
// best practice to use `__dirname` as a base.
const spec = openapi({ cwd: __dirname });
app.use("/api-docs", swaggerUi.serve, swaggerUi.setup(spec));

// The following comment is used to generate documentation:
/**
 * GET /hello
 * @summary Get a hello world message
 * @response 200 - OK
 */
// Set up a "/hello" route that sends a `hello world` message.
app.get("/hello", (req, res) => {
  // Try changing the following to:
  // req.send("hello world")
  // You should get a linting error. One of the benefits of typescript!
  // Typescript let's us know `req` doesn't have a method called `send`
  res.send("hello world")
});

// Listen on port 3000.
app.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log(`listening on port ${PORT}`);
});

Then create a yaml file, this file could be named anything, I called mine todo-app.yml you could also call it metadata.yml. This file sets up basic info, like the name of our app and which version of OpenAPI to use:

openapi: 3.0.3
info:
  title: Todo App
  version: 1.0.0

Run yarn start to start your server:

yarn start

Try going to http://localhost:3000/hello in your browser. You should see a hello world message displayed.

You can also try going to http://localhost:3000/api-docs/ to see our generated documentation so far. The try it out feature can be super helpful for debuging your API without having to build a real frontend, especial for non GET requests like POST, PUT or DELETE.

Creating a router

It's normally a good practice to create a router to separate your routes. We will create a router for our /todo route.

Go ahead and replace our app.ts file with the following:

import express from "express";
import swaggerUi from "swagger-ui-express";
import openapi from "openapi-comment-parser";

// Import our `todoRouter`.
import todoRouter from "./routes/todo";

const PORT = 3000;

const app = express();

// Add body parsers for application/json and text/plain content-types.
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.text());

const spec = openapi({ cwd: __dirname });
app.use("/api-docs", swaggerUi.serve, swaggerUi.setup(spec));

// Send any requests for "/todo" to our `todoRouter`.
app.use("/todo", todoRouter);

// Send a 404 error if the page can not be found.
app.use((req, res) => {
  res.sendStatus(404);
});

app.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log(`listening on port ${PORT}`);
});

Create a directory called routes and add a file for our router called todo.ts. You src folder should look something like this:

 📂 src
 ├── 📂 routes
 │   └── 📄 todo.ts
 ├── 📄 app.ts
 └── 📄 metadata.yml

Add the following to todo.ts:

import { v4 as uuid4 } from "uuid";
import { Router } from "express";

const router = Router();

// We finally have some unique typescript code:
// This defines an interface called `Todo` that has 3 required fields: 
// `id` a string, `message` a string, and `complete` a boolean.
interface Todo {
  id: string;
  message: string;
  complete: boolean;
}

// Initialize an array of `Todo`s. Typescript will yell at us if we try to
// append something to this array that isn't a valid `Todo`.
let todo: Todo[] = [];

/**
 * GET /todo
 * @summary Get the TODO list.
 * @queryParam {boolean} [complete] - Filter by complete.
 * @response 200 - OK
 */
router.get("/", (req, res) => {
  const { complete } = req.query;

  // If no complete query parameter, return all todo.
  if (complete === undefined) {
    return res.json(todo);
  }

  // Filter todo based on completion.
  return res.json(todo.filter((item) => item.complete.toString() === complete));
});

/**
 * POST /todo
 * @summary Create a new TODO item.
 * @bodyDescription The TODO message.
 * @bodyContent {string} text/plain
 * @bodyRequired
 * @response 200 - OK
 */
router.post("/", (req, res) => {
  // Create a new todo.
  const newTodo = { id: uuid4(), message: req.body, complete: false };

  // Add todo to list.
  todo.push(newTodo);

  return res.json(newTodo);
});

/**
 * PUT /todo/{id}
 * @summary Update a TODO item.
 * @pathParam {string} id
 * @bodyContent {Todo} application/json
 * @bodyRequired
 * @response 200 - OK
 * @response 400 - Invalid ID supplied
 */
router.put("/:id", (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;

  // Find todo by id.
  const todoIndex = todo.findIndex((item) => item.id === id);

  // If found, edit it.
  if (todoIndex > -1) {
    const requestedTodo = todo[todoIndex];
    const modifiedTodo = {
      ...requestedTodo,
      ...req.body,
      id: requestedTodo.id, // don't let them overwrite id.
    };
    todo[todoIndex] = modifiedTodo;
    return res.json(modifiedTodo);
  }

  // Otherwise, return 400 error.
  return res.status(400).send("Invalid ID");
});

/**
 * DELETE /todo/{id}
 * @summary Delete a TODO item.
 * @pathParam {string} id
 * @response 200 - OK
 * @response 400 - Invalid ID supplied
 */
router.delete("/:id", (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;

  // Find todo by id.
  const todoIndex = todo.findIndex((item) => item.id === id);

  // If found, delete it.
  if (todoIndex > -1) {
    todo = todo.filter((item) => item.id !== id);
    return res.end();
  }

  // Otherwise, return 400 error.
  return res.status(400).send("Invalid ID");
});

/**
 * GET /todo/{id}
 * @pathParam {string} id
 * @summary Get a TODO item by id.
 * @response 200 - OK
 * @response 400 - Invalid ID supplied
 */
router.get("/:id", (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;

  // Find todo by id.
  const requestedTodo = todo.find((item) => item.id === id);
  if (requestedTodo) {
    return res.json(requestedTodo);
  }

  // Otherwise, return 400 error.
  return res.status(400).send("Invalid ID");
});

export default router;

Create a file in routes called components.yml or todo.yml. This file is used by OpenAPI comment parser to create a schema called Todo with 2 fields: message and complete. This Todo schema is used as a @bodyContent for the PUT request when modifying a todo item:

components:
  schemas:
    Todo:
      type: object
      properties:
        message:
          type: string
        complete:
          type: boolean

If you haven't killed your server yet, refresh http://localhost:3000/api-docs/. Otherwise run:

yarn start

Then open http://localhost:3000/api-docs/ in your browser. You should see something like this:

Try it out by getting a list of Todos, creating a new one, updating it and deleting it.

Production build

When deploying our API in production, we don't want to use typescript and ts-node we just want to use node and regular javascript.

We can add a build script to our package.json that builds the javascript version of our server:

{
  "scripts": {
    "clean": "rimraf dist",
    "compile": "tsc",
    "copy": "copyfiles -u 1 src/**/*.yml dist",
    "build": "run-s clean compile copy"
  }
}

The build is split into three steps: clean, compile, copy.

clean: Delete the old dist folder.
compile: Compile the typescript to javascript and export it to the dist folder.
copy: The yaml files don't get exported to dist using tsc so we need to copy them over as well.
- copyfiles: -u 1 removes the top-level directory when copying files, so we don't end up with a src folder in our dist folder.

We have a couple dev dependencies that need to be installed to run these scripts:

yarn add -D rimraf copyfiles npm-run-all

dependencies

rimraf: Recursively remove a directory, the crossplatform version of rm -rf
copyfiles: Copy files from one place to another.
npm-run-all: Run multiple npm commands in sequence or parallel.

You should now be able to build your project by running:

yarn build

Once built you can run the build like a normal node app:

node dist/app.js

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Repository files navigation

How to build a TypeScript server

TL;DR

Setup Node and a package manager

Start a project

Make sure Node is working

Moving to typescript

Setting up a good development environment

Linting

Code formatting

Automatic re-running

Setup linting

Setup code formatting

Setup vscode

Setup automatic re-running

Setup the project

Update the typescript config

Coding time!

Creating a router

Production build

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Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 8 Commits
assets		assets
src		src
.eslintignore		.eslintignore
.eslintrc.json		.eslintrc.json
.gitignore		.gitignore
.prettierrc		.prettierrc
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
package.json		package.json
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json
yarn.lock		yarn.lock

License

bourdakos1/typescript-todo

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Repository files navigation

How to build a TypeScript server

TL;DR

Setup Node and a package manager

Start a project

Make sure Node is working

Moving to typescript

Setting up a good development environment

Linting

Code formatting

Automatic re-running

Setup linting

Setup code formatting

Setup vscode

Setup automatic re-running

Setup the project

Update the typescript config

Coding time!

Creating a router

Production build

About

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