Use TypeScript compiler from node

Question

It\'s pretty easy to do this with coffee-script.

var coffee = require(\'coffee-script\');
coffee.compile(\"a = 1\");
//=> \'(function() {\\n  var a;\\n\\n  a          


        

Answer 1

Official documentation about how to use TypeScript transpiler API to generate JavaScript source from a .ts file:

https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Using-the-Compiler-API#user-content-transpiling-a-single-file

Official documentation about how to use TypeScript compiler API to compile a .ts file or a TS project to

https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Using-the-Compiler-API#user-content-a-minimal-compiler

(the later doesn't answer the original question but is very common to access /modify the AST and then transpile to object language so it could be usefull)

Answer 2

better-require could help you achieve this.

It lets you require() typescript files - no pre-compilation needed - and a bunch of other file formats (coffeescript, clojurescript, yaml, xml, etc.)

require('better-require')();
var myModule = require('./mymodule.ts');

Disclosure: I wrote better-require.

Answer 3

It seems that nowadays there is a simpler solution, you can do:

let ts = require('typescript');
let source = ts.transpileModule('class Test {}', {}).outputText;

This results in:

"use strict";
var Test = (function () {
    function Test() {
    }
    return Test;
}());

Answer 4

Since TypeScript's NPM module doesn't export any public interface, the only way to do this currently is to execute the tsc process.

var exec = require('child_process').exec;

var child = exec('tsc main.ts',
                function(error, stdout, stderr) {
                    console.log('stdout: ' + stdout);
                    console.log('stderr: ' + stderr);
                    if (error !== null) {
                      console.log('exec error: ' + error);
                    }
                });

An issue has been opened to request a public interface for the TypeScript module.

Answer 5

Not answering the question directly, but since Googling for "run TypeScript from node directly" brings up this StackOverflow page, I figure I should add that you're able to do this with ts-node: https://github.com/TypeStrong/ts-node

Answer 6

Check this github project by niutech, it can convert TypeScript code to JS code on the fly in browser, but I guess it can be easily be modified to work in node.js.

I found it while I'm investigating the possibility of support TypeScript in my live, firebug-inspired code editor.