Node.js Typescript Modern Starter

While developing with Typescript and Node.js is awesome, setting up a new project is painful. This minimal and modern starter repo is here to help you get started with Node.js and Typecript without the pain.

Overview

This starter uses a bare-bones and minimal approach to get anyone up and running with a new project in no time. It provides:

• Typescript 5 with a strict tsconfig.
• Yarn/Npm scripts ready to do everything you commonly need. Supporting compile, clean, test, bundle, dev and start. These scripts are created to be compatible with the operating systems linux, macos and windows.
• Github Actions in place runnung with current node LTS version (20) on linux, macos and windows to automatically (for each PR):
  • test the code
  • compile the codebase from ts to js
  • check for formatting issues
  • check for linting issues
• Testing via jest
• Formatting via prettier.
• Linting via eslint and typescript-eslint
• Bundling via esbuild, a fast bundler that "just works".
• Debugging set up with examples for vscode and vim.
• Automated dependency updates via renovate.
• Using the current LTS, nodejs 20

Project Goals

• Help you to just get started with a Node.js Typescript setup and not worry about configuration.
• All scripts compatible with linux, macos and windows.
• No magic. Everything kept as simple as possible while configuring anything you might need.
• Advocate for testing your code. The common approaches of tests and code side by side as well as all tests in a seperate folder already working and set up for you.
• Advocate for using CI/CD (in this case Github Actions). Automatically check formatting, check linting, compile and test the code base. Everything running on each PR.
• Advocate establishing best practices via linting rules using eslint and typescript-eslint. However, still giving a documented way to quickly and easily disable them, if that is preferred.
• Use modern tools like esbuild, typescript 5 and the nodejs test runner.
• Be open for any framework or library that you prefer. This setup should be useful to everyone. You can easily add your preferred packages in no time.

Prerequisites

• nvm (or something like nvm-windows if you are on windows)

Quickstart

• Clone the repo git clone git@github.com:xddq/nodejs-typescript-modern-starter
• Remove the .git folder cd nodejs-typescript-modern-starter && rm -rf .git
• (optional) Update the package.json name, author, keywords, etc..
• Set up your own git folder and create your first commit. Run git init && git add . && git commit -am "initial commit"
• (optional) Set up the git hook for formatting your code. cp .git-hooks/pre-commit .git/hooks/pre-commit. For windows you need to use WSL to use this.
• Use the node version specified in .nvmrc nvm install && nvm use (on windows you need to specify the node version in the command)
• Enable corepack and update yarn corepack enable
• Install dependencies yarn
• You're done🎉 What about you try running the tests? Run yarn test. See the section below for all available commands together with their explanation.

Scripts and their explanation

All scripts can be found inside the package.json file under the "scripts" attribute.

• yarn bundle -> Bundles the whole code into a single javascript file which will be stored inside the dist folder. For prod deployments you typically just copy this file somewhere and then run something like node --enable-source-maps ./index.js.
• yarn clean -> Removes bundled files by deleting the dist folder. Normally there is no need to invoke this manually.
• yarn compile -> Runs the typescript compiler against the typescript codebase. Displays any errors if they occur.
• yarn compile:watch -> Runs the typescript compiler every time you make changes to a file. It is good to open this in another terminal while developing to spot typescript issues.
• yarn dev -> This should be used for running the code while developing. It watches all changes you make to your typescript codebase and automatically rebuilds the project. It does also watch all changes made to the built project and restarts the code whenever changes are detected. This enables a quick feedback loop.
• yarn debug -> Starts the app in debugging mode. Waits for a debugger to attach. See Debugging below for more info.
  • If you want to restart the debugging process every time you change the code, you can use something like nodemon --watch src --watch test --ext ts,json --exec 'yarn debug' or when debugging tests with nodemon --watch src --watch test --ext ts,json --exec 'yarn debug:test'
• yarn debug:test -> Starts the test run in debugging mode. Waits for a debugger to attach. See Debugging below for more info.
• yarn format -> Formats the code using prettier.
• yarn format:check -> Checks for formatting errors using prettier. This is typically only invoked by the CI/CD pipeline.
• yarn lint -> Lints the code using eslint. Fixes problems that are auto-fixable and reports the rest of them to you.
• yarn lint:check -> Checks for linting errors using eslint. This is typically only invoked by the CI/CD pipeline.
• yarn start -> Runs the code. This only works if the code was bundled before ;).
• yarn test -> Tests your codebase. Basic tests are created for both major common approaches of putting tests beside the source code as well as putting tests in a separate folder.
  • You can inspect the code coverage in depth by running npx http-server ./coverage/lcov-report and then browsing http://localhost:8080.

Debugging

An enourmous amount of people default to console log debugging since understanding the setup for debugging typescript can be somewhat awful and painful. This repo provides a debug config and guide ready to use for vscode and for vim using vimspector. Both use the mostly DAP compliant debugger vscode-js-debug.

Debugging Code

There are somewhat "different" ways of starting the debugger. Once is by starting the app and waiting for a debugger to connect and the other one is starting the app initiated by the debugger. I made the experience that the former works on any given code base, no matter the amount of transipilation or bundling steps and custom steups while the latter does fail in extremely customized scenarios. Therefore here only the first one is covered with examples.

Vim or Vscode

• Run yarn debug in another terminal
• Open src/index.ts vim ./src/index.ts (or code ./src/index.ts) in another terminal.
• Set breakpoint somewhere in the file at the console log (F9 is the default mapping).
• Start by pressing F5
• Press F5 again, should see the console.log output
• Done🎉

Debugging Tests

Vim or Vscode

• Run yarn debug:test in another terminal
• Open src/index.ts vim ./src/hello.test.ts in another terminal.
• Set breakpoint in the line of the console log in the test file.
• Start by pressing F5 (then skip the jest internal file once with F5)
• Check the terminal where you ran yarn debug:test, it should not display the console log yet.
• Press F5 again, should see the console.log output there now.
• Done🎉

Linting

This repo has eslint and typescript-eslint as well as an automated Github Action to check for linting set up and ready to go.

The rules in this project are my personal preference and reflect a subset of the recommended options. They also include a lot of the more strict options (NOT included in the recommended ones). My goal is to simplify having a consistent code base/code style, to avoid catchable bugs early and advocate for usage of newer features of the language.

However, I made it dead simple to enable the default/recommended eslint rules, if you want to use them instead. Everything is documented, just browse to ./.eslintrc.cjs and adapt the code.

Automated Dependency Updates

After using this repo (either via the github template or by simply cloning it) you have to set up a renovate bot. For github this can easily be done via the Github Apps renovate as well as renovate-approve. To be able to the mimic the approach used in this repo, you should set up:

• the repo setting to allow auto-merge
• a branch protection rule for the main branch to require approval (will be handled via renovate-approve)