Use TypeScript compiler from node

Question

Use TypeScript compiler from node

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 = 1;\n\n}).call(this);\n'

Is there a way to do this with typescript?

Edit: also posted on codeplex

node.js
typescript

Answer 1

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 2

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 3

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.