TypeScript offers a short-cut to creating properties/fields from the parameters declared on the constructor.

For example, if we declare our class and constructor like this

class Person {
    constructor(name: string, age: number) {
    }
}

let p = new Person("Scooby", 10);
p.name = "Doo";

The TypeScript transpiler will display the error “Property ‘name’ does not exist on type ‘Person'” and obviously the parameters name and age will not exist within the Person class as they’ve not been declared.

However if we prefix the parameters with either public, private, protected or readonly then TypeScript generates properties on the Person object automatically for us.

protected parameter properties

As you’d probably expect, with the accessor of protected properties are generated which are visible to the Person object and any subclass of the Person.

For example

class Person {
    constructor(protected name: string, protected age: number) {
    }
}

When we run this through the transpiler we get the following

var Person = /** @class */ (function () {
    function Person(name, age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
    }
    return Person;
}());

If we attempt to access the properties name and age from outside the class (using TypeScript) then we’ll get the error “Property ‘name’ is protected and only accessible within class ‘Person’ and its subclasses.”.

private parameter properties

If we now change the accessors to private, for example

class Person {
    constructor(private name: string, private age: number) {
    }
}

The transpiler will, again, create the same output as the previous JavaScript code, but the generated properties, from the TypeScript point of view, are only accessible from the Person class. Trying to access them from outside of the Person class will result in the following error, “Property ‘name’ is private and only accessible within class ‘Person’..

public parameter properties

Changing the accessors to public will, as you probably expected, create public properties/fields which are accessible outside of the Person class, here’s the altered source code.

class Person {
    constructor(public name: string, public age: number) {
    }
}

Ofcourse, the JavaScript code is unchanged.

readonly parameter properties

Finally, if we now change the accessors to readonly, for example

class Person {
    constructor(readonly name: string, readonly age: number) {
    }
}

The transpiler will generate, what appears to be, getters only. Hence trying to interact with these properties outside of the class will result in the following error “Cannot assign to ‘name’ because it is a read-only property.”

Whilst JavaScript can support the concept of readonly properties, the transpiler does not go this route (shown below)

Readonly properties in JavaScript

If we take the code generated by the transpiler, we could add the following

Object.defineProperty(Person.prototype, "name", {
    value: "name",
    writable: false
});

and when run (assuming we try to assign a value to name), we’ll get the following error “Cannot assign to read only property ‘name’ of object ‘#‘”.

This post is a little long but the aim is to cover creating a simple TypeScript/HTML website without using any frameworks but using a whole bunch of standard tools.

The website will be pathetically unimpressive because I want to solely concentrate on just getting the various technologies working together.

We’ll be using Visual Code as the editor. We’ll be using TypeScript, ESLint and Jest (as per previous posts on this topics) and we’ll be using webpack to both create a distribution of our code and to host our code.

Creating the basics

• Create the project’s folder, mine’s zerotoweb
• Open Visual code against the new folder
• Use the key combination (on mine it’s CTRL + ‘ on Windows) to open the terminal within Visual Code or if you prefer open a command prompt and navigate to the the folder you created
• run yarn init –yes within the terminal. This will create the package.json file
• run tsc –init within the terminal to create the tsconfig.json file
• Change tsconfig.json to the following contents

  {
    "compilerOptions": {
      "target": "es6",
      "outDir": "./public",
      "rootDir": "./src",
      "allowJs": true,
      "skipLibCheck": true,
      "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
      "strict": true,
      "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
      "module": "esnext",
      "moduleResolution": "node",
      "resolveJsonModule": true,
      "noImplicitAny": false
    },
    "include": [
      "src"
    ],
    "exclude": [
      "node_modules"
    ]
  }
  

• Next create the src folder off of the root
• Add a file named index.ts to src folder and add the following code

  class App {
      getSalutation() {
          return "Hello World"
      } 
  }
  
  let app = new App();
  console.log(app.getSalutation());
  

• We’ll want to run from node, which currently doesn’t support es6 so we’ll need to add babel, so run
  • yarn add babel-cli -D
  • yarn add babel-preset-es2015 -D
  • yarn add babel-preset-env -D
• Let’s now add a couple of scripts to package.json

  "scripts": 
  {
     "build": "tsc --watch", 
     "start": "babel-node --presets es2015 ./public/index.js"
  }
  

• Now we need to add a configuration file for babel, so add a .babelrc file to the root folder and put the following within it

  {
     "presets": ["env"]
  }
  

• Next we want to add ESLint (this section is a duplication of the previous post but is here for completeness), so run the following
  • yarn add eslint -D
  • yarn add @typescript-eslint/parser -D
  • yarn add @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin -D
  • Add a .eslintrc.js file to the root folder, place the following into the file

    module.exports = {
        "parser": '@typescript-eslint/parser',
        "plugins": ['@typescript-eslint'],
        "extends": ['plugin:@typescript-eslint/recommended'],
        "rules": {
            "@typescript-eslint/no-parameter-properties": "off",
            "@typescript-eslint/no-explicit-any": "off"
        }
    };
    

  • Now add the following “lint”: “eslint ./src/*.ts” to the scripts section of the package.json
• Now run yarn build
• Lets see some output, so run yarn start. If all went well you should see Hello World output.

Adding tests

I’ve covered installing Jest for testing React applications previously but let’s see the steps to take to get everything installed for our non-React world

• yarn add jest -D
• yarn add @types/jest -D
• yarn add ts-jest -D
• yarn add @types/node -D (not sure about this one)
• Add __tests__ under the src folder
• Add TypeScript tests to the __tests__ folder, convention suggests {name}.test.ts for the filenames
• Add “test”: “jest” to the scripts section of packages.json if you want to run the tests yourself (i.e. no plugin or watch)
• Finally in the root folder add the file jest.config.js with the following code

  module.exports = {
      roots: ['./src'],
      transform: {
        '^.+\\.tsx?$': 'ts-jest',
      },
      testRegex: '(/__tests__/.*|(\\.|/)(test|spec))\\.tsx?$',
      moduleFileExtensions: ['ts', 'tsx', 'js', 'jsx', 'json', 'node'],
    }
  

In Visual Code the plugin for Jest (Use Facebok’s Jest With Pleasure) from Orta is very useful to have.

Test coverage

Jest includes an option for running code coverage, simply change your packages.json script to

• “test”: “jest –coverage”

Adding webpack

Next up we’re going to create our basic web site, extending on what we’ve already covered.

• Create folder name public off of the root folder
• Add a file named index.html to public folder, here’s the HTML

  <html>    
      <body>
          <script src="./index.js"></script>
      </body>
  </html>
  

• Run the following commands
  • yarn add webpack -D
  • yarn add webpack-cli -D
  • yarn add webpack-dev-server -D
  • yarn add babel-loader@7 -D (@7 was required for bable-core)
  • yarn add babel-core -D
• Create a webpack.config.js in the root folder here’s mine

  var path = require("path");
  module.exports = {
     entry: {
       app: ["./public/index.js"]
     },
    output: {
      path: path.resolve(__dirname, "build"),
      filename: "bundle.js"
    },
    devServer: {
      port: 9000,
      contentBase: "./public"
    },
    module: {
      rules: [
        {
          test: /\.js$/,
          exclude: /(node_modules)/,
          use: {
            loader: "babel-loader",
            options: {
              presets: ["babel-preset-env"]
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  };
  

• Now replace the console.log line within the index.ts file with the following

  document.body.innerHTML = app.getSalutation();
  

• Replace the previously created “start” script with “start”: “webpack-dev-server –open” in packages.json “scripts” section
• Let’s run yarn start and if all went well you should see a browser window open and display our HTML page with the JavaScript created from our TypeScript file displayed

Time to create bundles

We’re going to use webpack to create some distribution bundles

• Run the following commands
  • yarn add express -D
  • yarn add webpack-dev-middleware -D
  • yarn add html-webpack-plugin -D
  • yarn add clean-webpack-plugin -D
• Change the webpack.config.json to

  const path = require('path');
  const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin');
  const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin');
  
  module.exports = {
    mode: 'development',
    entry: {
      app: './public/index.js'
    },
    devtool: 'inline-source-map',
    devServer: {
      port: 9000,
      contentBase: './dist'
    },
    plugins: [
      new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
      new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
        title: 'Demo'
      })
    ],
    output: {
      filename: '[name].bundle.js',
      path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
      publicPath: '/'
    }
  };
  

• Add “bundle”: “webpack” to the scripts section of the packages.json file. This will create a dist folder with, both the HTML file and the JS files we’ve created and generated

Minifying

You’ll notice that the JavaScript file generated in the previous steps is not exactly small, containing comments, whitespace etc. So we’re going to minify it for distribution.

• Run yarn add babel-minify-webpack-plugin -D
• Within the webpack.config.js file, comment out devtool: ‘inline-source-map’,
• Add this line to the top of the file

  const MinifyPlugin = require("babel-minify-webpack-plugin");
  

• Add new MinifyPlugin to the file, so it looks like this

  plugins: [
     new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
     new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
        title: 'Demo'
     }),
     new MinifyPlugin()
  ],
  

• Finally, run our script yarn bundle

Trying an alternate minify

Let’s try terser

• Run yarn add terser-webpack-plugin -D
• Add this line to the top of webpack.config.js

  const TerserPlugin = require('terser-webpack-plugin');
  

• Add the following to webpack.config.js

  optimization: {
      minimizer: [new TerserPlugin({
        extractComments: true,
        test: /\.js(\?.*)?$/i,
      })],
    },
  

The optimization will need to be run webpack in production mode, i.e. webpack –mode=production or webpack-dev-server –open –mode=production or in webpack.config.js set mode: ‘production’.

Hence using yarn we can run yarn bundle –mode=production to see the bundle.js has been minified using terse. Obviously you can remove the new MinifyPlugin() also at this point if using TerserPlugin.