How do I use namespaces with TypeScript external modules?

Question

I have some code:

baseTypes.ts

export namespace Living.Things {
  export class Animal {
    move() { /* ... */ }
  }
  export class          


        

Answer 1

Nothing wrong with Ryan's answer, but for people who came here looking for how to maintain a one-class-per-file structure while still using ES6 namespaces correctly please refer to this helpful resource from Microsoft.

One thing that's unclear to me after reading the doc is: how to import the entire (merged) module with a single import.

Edit Circling back to update this answer. A few approaches to namespacing emerge in TS.

All module classes in one file.

export namespace Shapes {
    export class Triangle {}
    export class Square {}      
}

Import files into namespace, and reassign

import { Triangle as _Triangle } from './triangle';
import { Square as _Square } from './square';

export namespace Shapes {
  export const Triangle = _Triangle;
  export const Square = _Square;
}

Barrels

// ./shapes/index.ts
export { Triangle } from './triangle';
export { Square } from './square';

// in importing file:
import * as Shapes from './shapes/index.ts';
// by node module convention, you can ignore '/index.ts':
import * as Shapes from './shapes';
let myTriangle = new Shapes.Triangle();

A final consideration. You could namespace each file

// triangle.ts
export namespace Shapes {
    export class Triangle {}
}

// square.ts
export namespace Shapes {
    export class Square {}
}

But as one imports two classes from the same namespace, TS will complain there's a duplicate identifier. The only solution as this time is to then alias the namespace.

import { Shapes } from './square';
import { Shapes as _Shapes } from './triangle';

// ugh
let myTriangle = new _Shapes.Shapes.Triangle();

This aliasing is absolutely abhorrent, so don't do it. You're better off with an approach above. Personally, I prefer the 'barrel'.