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Angular2StarterApp

A starter template for building Angular 2 apps with Typescript and Visual Studio Code.

Getting Started

I assume you already have nodejs and Visual Studio Code installed. You will need the latest version of Typescript (1.5.3), the tsd NPM package for managing Typescript definitions and a simple web server. I like the very easy to use http-server, but feel free to use whatever you like. All three of these can be installed globally with the command below. If you are using Windows, make sure your system path includes the path the version 1.5 of TypeScript.

Here are the steps to get the app running:

  • Clone this repository
  • From a terminal type npm install -g tsd typescript http-server
  • Open the project folder in Visual Studio Code
  • CMD+SHIFT+P on a Mac or CTRL+SHIFT+P on Windows and Linux
  • Type Run Task and select the tsc task
  • Open a terminal in the app folder of the project root
  • Type http-server to start a webserver with all of the default options
  • Visit http://localhost:8080 in a browser
  • If you see Welcome to My Starter App then everything is working.
  • Enjoy learning and hacking on Angular 2, Typescript, and Visual Studio Code!

Angular 2

The index.html file contains a reference to an early version of Angular 2 on https://code.angularjs.org.

Typescript Definitions

The project uses the tsd package to manage the DefinitelyTyped definitions that provide Intellisense in Visual Studio Code. The tsd package combines all of your type definition references into a single file named tsd.d.ts. That file is inside the typings folder in the project along with folders containing all of the actual definition files added with the tsd command. You can then simply reference that file in each of your Typescript files to get Intellisense for your included definitions. You can see an example of including the tsd.d.ts file at the top of the app.ts file inside the app folder.

The tsd.json file in the root of the project contains references to the specific versions of the definition files used in the project. New references can be added by using the tsd command from a terminal.

Visual Studio Code Tasks

Visual Studio Code includes a task runner. I have included the default tsc task for compiling Typescript code. The task definitions are stored in a file named tasks.json inside the .settings folder in the root of the project. The Visual Studio Code docs explain tasks very well.

I'm a big fan of Gulp which is also supported and may configure it to use that in the future.

Compiling Typescript Code

The latest 1.5.0-beta release of Typescript allows the compiler to be configured with options specified in a tsconfig.json file. I have included that file in the root of the project and specified a few options for the compiler. It is configured to compile all Typescript files to ES5 and store them and their associated map file in a folder named js inside the projects app folder. Running the default tsc task as described in the Getting Started section above will invoke the Typescript compiler with the options specified in the tsconfig.json file.

Application Structure

Since this is just a starter template there is not much of a structure already in place. The app's main component is in the app.ts file and it gets its associated template from a file located in the templates folder inside the app folder.