Book Image

TypeScript Blueprints

By : Ivo Gabe de Wolff
Book Image

TypeScript Blueprints

By: Ivo Gabe de Wolff

Overview of this book

TypeScript is the future of JavaScript. Having been designed for the development of large applications, it is now being widely incorporated in cutting-edge projects such as Angular 2. Adopting TypeScript results in more robust software - software that is more scalable and performant. It's scale and performance that lies at the heart of every project that features in this book. The lessons learned throughout this book will arm you with everything you need to build some truly amazing projects. You'll build a complete single page app with Angular 2, create a neat mobile app using NativeScript, and even build a Pac Man game with TypeScript. As if fun wasn't enough, you'll also find out how to migrate your legacy codebase from JavaScript to TypeScript. This book isn't just for developers who want to learn - it's for developers who want to develop. So dive in and get started on these TypeScript projects.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
TypeScript Blueprints
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

What is TypeScript?


The TypeScript language looks like JavaScript; it is JavaScript with type annotations added to it. The TypeScript compiler has two main features: it is a transpiler and a type checker. A transpiler is a special form of compiler that outputs source code. In case of the TypeScript compiler, TypeScript source code is compiled to JavaScript code. A type checker searches for contradictions in your code. For instance, if you assign a string to a variable, and then use it as a number, you will get a type error.

The compiler can figure out some types without type annotations; for others you have to add type annotations. An additional advantage of these types is that they can also be used in editors. An editor can provide completions and refactoring based on the type information. Editors such as Visual Studio Code and Atom (with a plugin, namely atom-typescript) provide such features.