Programming TypeScript

Chapter 12. Building and Running TypeScript

If you’ve deployed and run a JavaScript application in production, then you know how to run a TypeScript application too—once you compile it to JavaScript, the two aren’t so different. This chapter is about productionizing and building TypeScript applications, but there isn’t much here that’s unique to TypeScript apps—it mostly applies to JavaScript applications too. We’ll divide it up into four sections, covering:

• The things you have to do to build any TypeScript application

• Building and running TypeScript applications on the server

• Building and running TypeScript applications in the browser

• Building for and publishing your TypeScript application to NPM

Building Your TypeScript Project

Building a TypeScript project is straightforward. In this section, we’ll cover the core ideas you’ll need to understand in order to build your project for whatever environment you plan to run it in.

Project Layout

I suggest keeping your source TypeScript code in a top-level src/ folder, and compiling it to a top-level dist/ folder. This folder structure is a popular convention, and splitting your source code and generated code into two top-level folders can make your life easier down the line, when you’re integrating with other tooling. It also makes it easier to exclude generated artifacts from source control.

Try to stick to this convention when you can:

my-app/ ├──dist/ │ ├──index.d.ts │ ├──index.js │ └──services/ │ ├──foo.d.ts │ ├──foo.js ...