tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin

What is tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin?

The tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin is a plugin for webpack that allows you to leverage the paths defined in your tsconfig.json file. This means you can alias paths in your TypeScript code and have those aliases correctly resolved by webpack when bundling your application. It simplifies the module resolution process when using TypeScript with webpack.

What are tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin's main functionalities?

Path Resolution

This feature allows webpack to resolve paths based on the aliases defined in the tsconfig.json file. The code sample shows how to include the TsconfigPathsPlugin in your webpack configuration.

const TsconfigPathsPlugin = require('tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  // ... other webpack config settings ...
  resolve: {
    plugins: [
      new TsconfigPathsPlugin({ configFile: './path/to/tsconfig.json' })
    ]
  }
};

Other packages similar to tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin

babel-plugin-module-resolver

This Babel plugin allows you to add new 'root' directories that contain your modules. It also allows you to map a path to another and to safely ignore certain modules during the Babel process. It's similar to tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin but is used in the context of Babel rather than webpack.

enhanced-resolve

This is the library that webpack uses under the hood for resolving modules. It can be used directly in Node.js projects to resolve files or directories using webpack's resolution algorithm. It's more low-level compared to tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin and doesn't directly use the tsconfig.json file.

aliasify

Aliasify is a transform for Browserify that lets you rewrite module calls in your browserify project. This can be used to alias module paths similar to what tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin does for webpack, but it's specific to Browserify.

README

tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin

Use this to load modules whose location is specified in the paths section of tsconfig.json when using webpack. This package provides the functionality of the tsconfig-paths package but as a webpack plug-in.

Using this plugin means that you should no longer need to add alias entries in your webpack.config.js which correspond to the paths entries in your tsconfig.json. This plugin creates those alias entries for you, so you don't have to!

How to install

NOTE: If you are using webpack 4 you need to use version >= 3.0.0 (which is aso backwards compatible with webpack 3).

yarn add --dev tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin

or

npm install --save-dev tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin

How to use

In your webpack config add this:

const TsconfigPathsPlugin = require('tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  ...
  resolve: {
    plugins: [new TsconfigPathsPlugin({/* options: see below */})]
  }
  ...
}

Notice that the plugin is placed in the resolve.plugins section of the configuration. tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin is a resolve plugin and should only be placed in this part of the configuration. Don't confuse this with the plugins array at the root of the webpack configuration object.

If you're using allowJs in tsconfig.json, or allow other non-TS extensions in webpack, make sure you set extensions option in sync with your webpack config.

Options

configFile (string) (default='tsconfig.json')

Allows you to specify where to find the TypeScript configuration file.

You may provide

• just a file name. The plugin will search for the filename using the built-in logic in the tsconfig-paths package. The search will start at cwd.
• a relative path to the configuration file. It will be resolved relative to cwd.
• an absolute path to the configuration file.

The use of cwd as default above is not optimal but we've found no better solution yet. If you have a suggestion please file an issue.

extensions (string[]) (default=[".ts", ".tsx"])

An array of the extensions that will be tried during resolve. Ideally this would be the same as the extensions from the webpack config but it seems resolver plug-ins does not have access to this information so you need to specify it again for the plugin.

baseUrl (string) (default=undefined)

This allows you to override the baseUrl found in tsconfig.json. The baseUrl specifies from which directory paths should be resolved. So this option enabled you to resolve from another directory than the one where tsconfig.json is located. This can be useful if you want to use webpack with tsc --watch instead of a typescript loader. If this option is undefined then the baseUrl from tsconfig.json will be used.

mainFields (string[]) (default=["main"])

An array of the field names that should be considered when resolving packages. Ideally this would be the same as the mainFields from the webpack config but it seems resolver plug-ins does not have access to this infomration so you need to specify it again for the plugin.

silent (boolean) (default=false)

If true, no console.log messages will be emitted. Note that most error messages are emitted via webpack which is not affected by this flag.

logLevel (string) (default=warn)

Can be info, warn or error which limits the log output to the specified log level. Beware of the fact that errors are written to stderr and everything else is written to stderr (or stdout if logInfoToStdOut is true).

colors (boolean) (default=true)

If false, disables built-in colors in logger messages.

logInfoToStdOut (boolean) (default=false)

This is important if you read from stdout or stderr and for proper error handling. The default value ensures that you can read from stdout e.g. via pipes or you use webpack -j to generate json output.

Typescript support

This package has typescript typings included. If your webpack config is using typescript, you can use this syntax to import the default export:

import TsconfigPathsPlugin from "tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin";

Or you can use this syntax to import the named export:

import { TsconfigPathsPlugin } from "tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin";

How to test

To run the provided example:

yarn example

How to publish

yarn version --patch
yarn version --minor
yarn version --major

Prior work

This project uses work done in the awesome-typescript-loader.

Changelog

4.0.0 - 2022-07-29

• chore: update tsconfig-paths dependency #90. Thanks to @MichaelDeBoey for this PR!

• Update webpack and remove temp types #92. Thanks to @hungtcs for this PR!

• Eslint (#95)

• Upgrade ci and jest (#96)