How do I execute typescript watch and running server at the same time?

Question

I was developing my project in nodejs. I found if I need to code and test api, I will run two console, one is to execute typescript watch, another is to execute server.

I think it's so troublesome. I find other developers on github have written scripts in package.json. It's easy to call any commands. It attracts how to write the scripts and simply my development workflow.

In short, the comand of typescript watch is tsc -w and the comand of running server is node app.js. My idea is merge the commands as tsc -w & node app.js but I can't work the two commands at the same time. How do I do? Thanks.

Answer 1

TLDR, If you like nodemon this is a straight forward way to get file watch, compilation and execution:

nodemon --ext ts --exec 'tsc && node dist/index.js'

Optionally replace tsc with babel for faster compilation.

Here is a more complete example, in package.json (with source maps):

"scripts": {
  "develop": "nodemon --ext ts --exec 'yarn build --incremental && yarn serve'",
  "build": "tsc",
  "serve": "node --require source-map-support/register dist/index.js",
  ...
},

Install source-map-support as a dependency if you want, ahem... source map support! Otherwise, remove --require source-map-support/register from the serve script above.

tsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    ...
    "sourceMap": true,
    "outDir": "dist",
  }
}

Answer 2

Step 1

install concurrently, use npm or yarn

yarn add concurrently -D   

Step 2

create a script with this command

"scripts": {
    "run": "tsc && concurrently \"tsc -w\" \"nodemon dist/app.js\"",
}

run tsc first so that your directory has something at the time of running node

And with that you will have running your Typescript application 🚀