Reference DLL from Typescript

Question

I have a Visual Studio code extension that has been developed in TypeScript and I would like to know if there is a way to reference methods from a DLL using Typescript. In this scenario, the DLL has logic to tokenize various elements in markdown files and I would like to leverage this logic instead of rewriting it.

I've used a library called ctypes for similar work in Python and I was wondering if anyone knows of a module for TypeScript or any native TypeScript functionality that I can leverage.

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Answer 1

This isn't a TypeScript specific problem. It's more broadly a JavaScript one.

Take a look at edge—specifically the section titled "How to: integrate c# code into Node.js code".

Using that you can load a .net assembly like so (code is lifted from their readme):

var clrMethod = edge.func({
    assemblyFile: 'My.Edge.Samples.dll',
    typeName: 'Samples.FooBar.MyType',
    methodName: 'MyMethod' // This must be Func<object,Task<object>>
});

If you're not using a .net assembly then you might be able to create a wrapper in .net to that library then reference that .net assembly in edge, but I'm not sure if that would work.