A template to assist you in creating and publishing TypeScript modules.

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NOTE: You probably want to "Use this template" ( the green button ) instead of forking the repo.

Presentation

This template automates the boring and tedious tasks of:

• Filling up the package.json
• Setting up Typescript.
• Writing a README.md with decent presentation and instructions on how to install/import your module.
• Testing on multiple Node version before publishing.
• Maintaining a CHANGELOG.
• Publishing on NPM and creating corresponding GitHub releases.

Besides, good stuff that comes with using this template:

• No source files are tracked on the default branch.
• Shorter specific file import path.
  import {...} from "my_module/theFile" instead of the usual import {...} from "my_module/dist/theFile"
• CDN distribution for importing from an .html file with a <script> tag.
• A branch latest always in sync with the latest release.

How to use

Fork it ( click use the template )

• Click on Use this template
• The repo name you will choose will be used as a module name for NPM so:
  • Be sure it makes for a valid NPM module name.
  • Check if there is not already a NPM module named like that.
• The description you provide will be the one used on NPM and in package.json ( you can change it later )

Once you've done that a GitHub action workflow will set up the README.md and the package.json for you, wait a couple of minutes for it to complete ( a bot will push ). You can follow the job advancement in the "Action" tab.

Each time you will push changes npm test will be run on remote docker containers against multiple node versions if everything passes you will get a green ci badges on your readme.

Enable automatic publishing.

Once you are ready to make your package available on NPM you will need to provide two tokens so that the workflow can publish on your behalf:

Go to repository Settings tab, then Secrets you will need to add two new secrets:

• NPM_TOKEN, you NPM authorization token.
• PAT, GitHub Personal Access Token with the repo authorization. link

To trigger publishing edit the package.json version field ( 0.0.0-> 0.0.1 for example) then push changes... that's all ! The publishing will actually be performed only if npm test passes.

Customization:

Changing the directory structures.

All your source files must remain inside the src dir, you can change how things are organized but don't forget to update your package.json main, type and files fields and tsconfig.esm.json include field when appropriate!

Swipe the image in the README.md

A good way to host your repo image is to open an issue named ASSET in your project, close it, create a comment, drag and drop the picture you want to use and that's it. You have a link that you can replace in the README.md.
While you are at it submit this image as social preview in your repos github page's settings so that when you share on Twitter or Reddit you don't get your GitHub profile picture to shows up.

Disable CDN build

If your project does not target the browser or if you are not interested in offering CDN distribution:

• Remove all cdn:* npm scripts and npm run cdn from the build script ( in package.json ).
• Remove ./tsconfig.esm.json
• Remove /dist/esm/ entry from files in package.json
• Remove simplifyify and terser from dev dependencies.

Remove unwanted dev dependencies.

Dev dependencies that are not required by the template ( you can safely remove them if you don't use them ):

• evt
• @types/node

Must keep:

• typescript
• denoify ( for the script that moves dist files to the root before publishing )
• simplifyify ( for CDN build )
• terser ( for CDN build )

Customizing the Badges

You can shields.io to create badges on metrics you would like to showcase.

WARNINGS:

• The template does not support .npmignore use package.json files instead.
• The template does not support .npmrc

The drawback of having short import path is that the dir structure
is not exactly the same in production ( in the npm bundle ) and in development.

The files and directories in dist/ will be moved to the root of the project.

As a result this won't work in production:

src/index.ts

import * as fs from "fs";
import * as path from "path";

const str = fs.readFileSync(
    path.join(__filename,"..", "package.json")
).toString("utf8");

Because /dist/index.js will be moved to /index.js

You'll have to do:

src/index.ts

import * as fs from "fs";
import * as path from "path";
import { getProjectRoot } from "./tools/getProjectRoot";

const str = fs.readFileSync(
    path.join(getProjectRoot(),"package.json")
).toString("utf8");

Video demo

Examples of auto-generated readme: