Npm In Visual Studio
Try NodeJS with Visual Studio Code. If you have not yet installed Visual Studio Code, return to the prerequisite section above and follow the installation steps linked for Windows or WSL. Open your command line and create a new directory: mkdir HelloNode, then enter the directory: cd HelloNode.
React is a popular JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building web application user interfaces. The Visual Studio Code editor supports React.js IntelliSense and code navigation out of the box.
- TypeScript can be installed through three installation routes depending on how you intend to use it: an npm module, a NuGet package or a Visual Studio Extension. If you are using Node.js, you want the npm version. If you are using MSBuild in your project, you want the NuGet package or Visual Studio extension.
- For the uninitiated, installing Visual Studio is a big process. Prepare at least an hour of time! It’s a huge tool but very worth it. Install Node.js. Download and install Node.js; Install Node Tools for Visual Studio. Download Node Tools for Visual Studio; Install NPM support for Visual Studio. Start Visual Studio; Tools - Extensions and Updates; Search for npm; Select and install the NPM Scripts Task Runner; Restart Visual Studio.
- You can use the Package Manager Console to run npm command. To open the Package Manager Console, go to Tools Nuget Package Manager and select Package Manager Console and then enter your npm command.
- Search results for 'npm', Visual Studio Code on marketplace.visualstudio.com.
Welcome to React
We'll be using the create-react-appgenerator for this tutorial. To use the generator as well as run the React application server, you'll need Node.js JavaScript runtime and npm (Node.js package manager) installed. npm is included with Node.js which you can download and install from Node.js downloads.
Tip: To test that you have Node.js and npm correctly installed on your machine, you can type node --version and npm --version in a terminal or command prompt.
You can now create a new React application by typing:
where my-app is the name of the folder for your application. This may take a few minutes to create the React application and install its dependencies.
Note: If you've previously installed create-react-app globally via npm install -g create-react-app, we recommend you uninstall the package using npm uninstall -g create-react-app to ensure that npx always uses the latest version.
Let's quickly run our React application by navigating to the new folder and typing npm start to start the web server and open the application in a browser:
You should see the React logo and a link to 'Learn React' on http://localhost:3000 in your browser. We'll leave the web server running while we look at the application with VS Code.
To open your React application in VS Code, open another terminal or command prompt window, navigate to the my-app folder and type code .:
Markdown preview
In the File Explorer, one file you'll see is the application README.md Markdown file. This has lots of great information about the application and React in general. A nice way to review the README is by using the VS Code Markdown Preview. You can open the preview in either the current editor group (Markdown: Open Preview⇧⌘V (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+V)) or in a new editor group to the side (Markdown: Open Preview to the Side⌘K V (Windows, Linux Ctrl+K V)). You'll get nice formatting, hyperlink navigation to headers, and syntax highlighting in code blocks.
Syntax highlighting and bracket matching
Now expand the src folder and select the index.js file. You'll notice that VS Code has syntax highlighting for the various source code elements and, if you put the cursor on a parenthesis, the matching bracket is also selected.
IntelliSense
As you start typing in index.js, you'll see smart suggestions or completions.
After you select a suggestion and type ., you see the types and methods on the object through IntelliSense.
VS Code uses the TypeScript language service for its JavaScript code intelligence and it has a feature called Automatic Type Acquisition (ATA). ATA pulls down the npm Type Declaration files (*.d.ts) for the npm modules referenced in the package.json.
If you select a method, you'll also get parameter help:
Go to Definition, Peek definition
Through the TypeScript language service, VS Code can also provide type definition information in the editor through Go to Definition (F12) or Peek Definition (⌥F12 (Windows Alt+F12, Linux Ctrl+Shift+F10)). Put the cursor over the App, right click and select Peek Definition. A Peek window will open showing the App definition from App.js.
Press Escape to close the Peek window.
Hello World!
Let's update the sample application to 'Hello World!'. Create a new H1 header with 'Hello, world!' and replace the <App /> tag in ReactDOM.render with element.
Once you save the index.js file, the running instance of the server will update the web page and you'll see 'Hello World!' when you refresh your browser.
Tip: VS Code supports Auto Save, which by default saves your files after a delay. Check the Auto Save option in the File menu to turn on Auto Save or directly configure the files.autoSave user setting.
Debugging React
To debug the client side React code, we'll need to install the Debugger for Chrome extension.
Note: This tutorial assumes you have the Chrome browser installed. There are also debugger extensions for the Edge and Firefox browsers.
Open the Extensions view (⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)) and type 'chrome' in the search box. You'll see several extensions which reference Chrome.
Press the Install button for Debugger for Chrome.
Set a breakpoint
To set a breakpoint in index.js, click on the gutter to the left of the line numbers. Europa universalis iv: fredmans epistles crack. This will set a breakpoint which will be visible as a red circle.
Using Npm In Visual Studio
Configure the Chrome debugger
We need to initially configure the debugger. To do so, go to the Run view (⇧⌘D (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+D)) and click create a launch.json file to customize Run and Debug. Choose Chrome from the Select Environment dropdown list. This will create a launch.json file in a new .vscode folder in your project which includes a configuration to launch the website.
We need to make one change for our example: change the port of the url from 8080 to 3000. Your launch.json should look like this:
Ensure that your development server is running (npm start). Then press F5 or the green arrow to launch the debugger and open a new browser instance. The source code where the breakpoint is set runs on startup before the debugger was attached, so we won't hit the breakpoint until we refresh the web page. Refresh the page and you should hit your breakpoint.
You can step through your source code (F10), inspect variables such as element, and see the call stack of the client side React application.
Npm In Visual Studio Code
The Debugger for Chrome extension README has lots of information on other configurations, working with sourcemaps, and troubleshooting. You can review it directly within VS Code from the Extensions view by clicking on the extension item and opening the Details view.
Live editing and debugging
If you are using webpack together with your React app, you can have a more efficient workflow by taking advantage of webpack's HMR mechanism which enables you to have live editing and debugging directly from VS Code. You can learn more in this Live edit and debug your React apps directly from VS Code blog post and the webpack Hot Module Replacement documentation.
Linting
Linters analyze your source code and can warn you about potential problems before you run your application. The JavaScript language services included with VS Code has syntax error checking support by default, which you can see in action in the Problems panel (View > Problems⇧⌘M (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+M)).
Try making a small error in your React source code and you'll see a red squiggle and an error in the Problems panel.
Linters can provide more sophisticated analysis, enforcing coding conventions and detecting anti-patterns. A popular JavaScript linter is ESLint. ESLint, when combined with the ESLint VS Code extension, provides a great in-product linting experience.
First, install the ESLint command-line tool:
Then install the ESLint extension by going to the Extensions view and typing 'eslint'.
Once the ESLint extension is installed and VS Code reloaded, you'll want to create an ESLint configuration file, .eslintrc.js. You can create one using the extension's ESLint: Create ESLint configuration command from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)).
The command will prompt you to answer a series of questions in the Terminal panel. Take the defaults, and it will create a .eslintrc.js file in your project root that looks something like this:
ESLint will now analyze open files and shows a warning in index.js about 'App' being defined but never used.
You can modify the ESLint rules in the .eslintrc.js file.
Let's add an error rule for extra semi-colons:
Now when you mistakenly have multiple semicolons on a line, you'll see an error (red squiggle) in the editor and error entry in the Problems panel.
Popular Starter Kits
How To Install Npm In Visual Studio Code
In this tutorial, we used the create-react-app generator to create a simple React application. There are lots of great samples and starter kits available to help build your first React application.
VS Code React Sample
This is a sample React application used for a demo at the 2016 //Build conference. The sample creates a simple TODO application and includes the source code for a Node.js Express server. It also shows how to use the Babel ES6 transpiler and then use webpack to bundle the site assets.
TypeScript React
If you're curious about TypeScript and React, you can also create a TypeScript version of the create-react-app application by specifying that you want to use the TypeScript template:
See the details at Adding TypeScript on the Create React App site.
Angular
Angular is another popular web framework. If you'd like to see an example of Angular working with VS Code, check out the Chrome Debugging with Angular CLI recipe. It will walk you through creating an Angular application and configuring the launch.json file for the Debugger for Chrome extension.
Common questions
Can I get IntelliSense within declarative JSX?
Yes. For example, if you open the create-react-app project's App.js file, you can see IntelliSense within the React JSX in the render() method.
Visual Studio is a fantastic IDE (and free for individual use)! It’s been so great that they’ve added modern web dev support in recent years for things like React, Webpack, and more. In addition, Visual Studio’s installer has an option to install Node.js as part of its regular installation in order to support the npm task runners that are built in. However, I ran into an issue I updated Node.js outside of Visual Studio , but since Visual Studio uses its own install that is separate from any outside installation, you can potentially run into a node_modules package dependency issue where one version of npm installs a package (which makes it rely on that version of Node/npm), and then you can’t run commands in the other version (they break).
Specifically, I had an issue with node-sass and windows bindings. The solution was to point Visual Studio to the version of Node.JS that I had already set up externally to Visual Studio. Here’s how to synchronize them:
Step 1: Find the Node.js install location
First, find the Node.js installation that you use on the command line. By default, Node.js installs to C:Program Filesnodejs. Unless you picked a custom installation directory when you initially installed Node.js, this is likely the path you’ll use.
12 labours of hercules iv: mother nature (platinum edition) for mac. Once you’ve found the installation directory, copy that directory path to your clipboard for a future step.
Step 2: Configure Visual Studio
Let’s setup up Visual Studio to point to the real Node.js
Note: These instructions work on Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, and probably future versions as well.
To configure Visual Studio to use a different version of Node.js, first open Visual Studio and navigate to Tools > Options.
In this dialog, go to Projects and Solutions > External Web Tools to open the dialog that manages all of the 3rd party tools used within Visual Studio. This is where Visual Studio is configured to point to a specific version of Node.js.
Add an entry at the top to the path to the Node.js directory to force Visual Studio to use that version instead.
Using the Windows PATH Instead
If you’re making this change, you probably notice that you can also move the $(PATH) option up to tell Visual Studio to look at the PATH environment variable to determine where it should look for node or other command line tools. The way crack. This is probably what you want globally if you’re someone who is comfortable with the command line and understand the implications.
In general it seems that Visual Studio tries to isolate itself and the tools it uses from both other installs of Visual Studio and anything else that may cause issue with it. In general, Visual Studio developers have not traditionally had to touch the command line much, so this makes sense historically, but modern web applications require a different approach.
Managing switching the Node.js Version using Powershell
Another issue that might arise due to using the $(PATH) is that you might have projects that use different versions of Node.js. For example one might use Node.js 8.x.x, while another uses 10.x.x. In this case you might want to use Node Version Manager, or 'NVM' as it’s called, to switch versions on the command line in powershell.
You can use NVM to switch versions of Node.js yourself on the command line, or use it to read the package.json file’s 'Engine' property, and sets the appropriate version. If the version isn’t available it can even silently install the appropriate Node.js version. This is helpful in many situations, and can be included in an MSBuild task if needed to swap the version when you hit the 'Play' button to the correct version, or as a step in your CI/CD build process.
Wrapping Up
And that’s it! Now you’re all synced up! Having two separate installs is really confusing. If you’re starting out with JUST the VS Node.js version, you’ll eventually come to a point where you may update node.js by installing it outside VS, causing it to get out of sync anyway. If you’re a veteran to Node.js, then you’re already using Node outside of Visual Studio and will need to do this anyway. It seems like there should be better documentation or indicators to show what version VS is using so this is more apparent.
Hope that helped. Did this fix it for you? Do you have a better way of keeping this in sync or a plugin/tool to help out? Let us know in the comments!