Introduction to the tsconfig file in TypeScript

Introduction to the tsconfig file in TypeScript:

tsconfig file is used as a configuration file in TypeScript. We can define different properties in this file like the source folder path, output folder path etc. There are a lot of different properties which can be configured using this file.

In this post, I will give you an introduction to tsconfig file, how to create a tsconfig file and different configurations that can be used with this.

YouTube video:

I have published one video on YouTube explaining what is tsconfig file and how to create and use a tsconfig file in step by step. You can watch it here:

How to create a tsconfig file:

To create one tsconfig.json file, you need to move to a folder that contains typescript files and run the bellow command in a terminal:

npx tsc --init

It will create one tsconfig.json file in that same folder. This file should be at the root folder of a typescript project.

By default, it looks as like below:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    /* Visit https://aka.ms/tsconfig.json to read more about this file */

    /* Basic Options */
    // "incremental": true,                         /* Enable incremental compilation */
    "target": "es5",                                /* Specify ECMAScript target version: 'ES3' (default), 'ES5', 'ES2015', 'ES2016', 'ES2017', 'ES2018', 'ES2019', 'ES2020', 'ES2021', or 'ESNEXT'. */
    "module": "commonjs",                           /* Specify module code generation: 'none', 'commonjs', 'amd', 'system', 'umd', 'es2015', 'es2020', or 'ESNext'. */
    // "lib": [],                                   /* Specify library files to be included in the compilation. */
    // "allowJs": true,                             /* Allow javascript files to be compiled. */
    // "checkJs": true,                             /* Report errors in .js files. */
    // "jsx": "preserve",                           /* Specify JSX code generation: 'preserve', 'react-native', 'react', 'react-jsx' or 'react-jsxdev'. */
    // "declaration": true,                         /* Generates corresponding '.d.ts' file. */
    // "declarationMap": true,                      /* Generates a sourcemap for each corresponding '.d.ts' file. */
    // "sourceMap": true,                           /* Generates corresponding '.map' file. */
    // "outFile": "./",                             /* Concatenate and emit output to single file. */
    // "outDir": "./",                              /* Redirect output structure to the directory. */
    // "rootDir": "./",                             /* Specify the root directory of input files. Use to control the output directory structure with --outDir. */
    // "composite": true,                           /* Enable project compilation */
    // "tsBuildInfoFile": "./",                     /* Specify file to store incremental compilation information */
    // "removeComments": true,                      /* Do not emit comments to output. */
    // "noEmit": true,                              /* Do not emit outputs. */
    // "importHelpers": true,                       /* Import emit helpers from 'tslib'. */
    // "downlevelIteration": true,                  /* Provide full support for iterables in 'for-of', spread, and destructuring when targeting 'ES5' or 'ES3'. */
    // "isolatedModules": true,                     /* Transpile each file as a separate module (similar to 'ts.transpileModule'). */

    /* Strict Type-Checking Options */
    "strict": true,                                 /* Enable all strict type-checking options. */
    // "noImplicitAny": true,                       /* Raise error on expressions and declarations with an implied 'any' type. */
    // "strictNullChecks": true,                    /* Enable strict null checks. */
    // "strictFunctionTypes": true,                 /* Enable strict checking of function types. */
    // "strictBindCallApply": true,                 /* Enable strict 'bind', 'call', and 'apply' methods on functions. */
    // "strictPropertyInitialization": true,        /* Enable strict checking of property initialization in classes. */
    // "noImplicitThis": true,                      /* Raise error on 'this' expressions with an implied 'any' type. */
    // "alwaysStrict": true,                        /* Parse in strict mode and emit "use strict" for each source file. */

    /* Additional Checks */
    // "noUnusedLocals": true,                      /* Report errors on unused locals. */
    // "noUnusedParameters": true,                  /* Report errors on unused parameters. */
    // "noImplicitReturns": true,                   /* Report error when not all code paths in function return a value. */
    // "noFallthroughCasesInSwitch": true,          /* Report errors for fallthrough cases in switch statement. */
    // "noUncheckedIndexedAccess": true,            /* Include 'undefined' in index signature results */
    // "noImplicitOverride": true,                  /* Ensure overriding members in derived classes are marked with an 'override' modifier. */
    // "noPropertyAccessFromIndexSignature": true,  /* Require undeclared properties from index signatures to use element accesses. */

    /* Module Resolution Options */
    // "moduleResolution": "node",                  /* Specify module resolution strategy: 'node' (Node.js) or 'classic' (TypeScript pre-1.6). */
    // "baseUrl": "./",                             /* Base directory to resolve non-absolute module names. */
    // "paths": {},                                 /* A series of entries which re-map imports to lookup locations relative to the 'baseUrl'. */
    // "rootDirs": [],                              /* List of root folders whose combined content represents the structure of the project at runtime. */
    // "typeRoots": [],                             /* List of folders to include type definitions from. */
    // "types": [],                                 /* Type declaration files to be included in compilation. */
    // "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,        /* Allow default imports from modules with no default export. This does not affect code emit, just typechecking. */
    "esModuleInterop": true,                        /* Enables emit interoperability between CommonJS and ES Modules via creation of namespace objects for all imports. Implies 'allowSyntheticDefaultImports'. */
    // "preserveSymlinks": true,                    /* Do not resolve the real path of symlinks. */
    // "allowUmdGlobalAccess": true,                /* Allow accessing UMD globals from modules. */

    /* Source Map Options */
    // "sourceRoot": "",                            /* Specify the location where debugger should locate TypeScript files instead of source locations. */
    // "mapRoot": "",                               /* Specify the location where debugger should locate map files instead of generated locations. */
    // "inlineSourceMap": true,                     /* Emit a single file with source maps instead of having a separate file. */
    // "inlineSources": true,                       /* Emit the source alongside the sourcemaps within a single file; requires '--inlineSourceMap' or '--sourceMap' to be set. */

    /* Experimental Options */
    // "experimentalDecorators": true,              /* Enables experimental support for ES7 decorators. */
    // "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,               /* Enables experimental support for emitting type metadata for decorators. */

    /* Advanced Options */
    "skipLibCheck": true,                           /* Skip type checking of declaration files. */
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true        /* Disallow inconsistently-cased references to the same file. */
  }
}

You can see that there are a few options enabled and others are commented out. Typescript compiler will first check for this tsconfig.json file at the root of a project when it first executes. It this file is found, the compiler uses the options defined in this file.

For example, the target is given as es5. We can also choose other ECMAScript target versions from the commented list.

Handling source and output folders:

Let's configure this config file with different source and output folders. source folder is where we will keep our source typescript files and output folder is where all javascript files are generated.

First of all, we need to define which folders to include and which folders to exclude. We can use the below keys for that:

"include": ["src"],
"exclude": ["node_modules"]

These pairs needs to be added below the json object.

Typescript copiler will include all files in the src folder and exclude all files in the node_modules folder.

Then, we can use the below config to define the output directory and root directory:

"outDir": "./out",
"rootDir": "./src"

This will put all the javascript files in the out folder.

The final json file will be as like below:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es5" /* Specify ECMAScript target version: 'ES3' (default), 'ES5', 'ES2015', 'ES2016', 'ES2017', 'ES2018', 'ES2019', 'ES2020', 'ES2021', or 'ESNEXT'. */,
    "module": "commonjs" /* Specify module code generation: 'none', 'commonjs', 'amd', 'system', 'umd', 'es2015', 'es2020', or 'ESNext'. */,
    "outDir": "./out" /* Redirect output structure to the directory. */,
    "rootDir": "./src",
    "strict": true /* Enable all strict type-checking options. */,
    "esModuleInterop": true /* Enables emit interoperability between CommonJS and ES Modules via creation of namespace objects for all imports. Implies 'allowSyntheticDefaultImports'. */,
    "skipLibCheck": true /* Skip type checking of declaration files. */,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true /* Disallow inconsistently-cased references to the same file. */,
  },
  "include": ["src"],
  "exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

Now if we use npx tsc, it will compile by using the given options.

How to use different tsconfig files for different environments:

We can use different tsconfig files for different environments. For example, you can create one tsconfig file for development environment and one for production etc.

It can be done easily by using -p with npx tsc:

npx tsc -p ./prod/tsconfig.json