TSPath

TypeScript Path Alias Resolver

Everyone working in a TypeScript project that grows beyond a certains limit will eventually experience the situation commonly described as path hell, the snippet below is an example of such hell.

Path hell

 import { IgniterApplication } from "../../../Application/IgniterApplication";
 import { CrcCalculator }      from "../../../../../../../Utilities/FileUtilities";
 import { IMessageHandler }    from "../../../../Messaging/IMessageHandler";
 import { IMessageHub }        from "../../../../Messaging/Hub/IMessageHub";
 import { CronTabHelper }      from "../../../../../../../Utilities/CronTabHelper";
 import { GLog }               from "../../../Application/GLog";

By specifying path aliases in tsconfig.json you can use that alias to form an "absolute path"

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    ...
    "paths": {
      "@App/*":         ["./Application/*"],
      "@Messaging/*":   ["./Messaging/*"],
      "@Utils/*":       ["./Server/Tools/Utilities/*"]
    }
  }
}

Below is the sample example but with Path Aliases instead of relative paths added, as you can see, the readability have improved significantly!

 import { IgniterApplication } from "@App/IgniterApplication";
 import { CrcCalculator }      from "@Utils/FileUtilities";
 import { IMessageHandler }    from "@Messaging/IMessageHandler";
 import { IMessageHub }        from "@Messaging/Hub/IMessageHub";
 import { CronTabHelper }      from "@Utils/CronTabHelper";
 import { GLog }               from "@App/GLog";

The TypeScript compiler will be able to resolve the paths so this will compile without problems, however the JavaScript output will not be possible to execute by Node nor a Web Browser, why? the reason is simple!

The JavaScript engine does not know anything about the compile time TypeScript configuration.

In order to run your JavaScript code, the path aliases now needs to be made into relative paths again, here is when TSPath comes into play.

So, simply run:

$ tspath

Yes, that´s it, really!

Say bye bye to the relative path hell!