tsconfig.json/paths not working with ts-node

[unional]

One neat trick to use tsconfig.json/paths is to pointing the module name to your source file:

// tsconfig.json of blue-tape-fixture
{
  ...
  "paths": {
    "blue-tape-fixture": [ "src/" ]
  }
}

This way, your test files can reference the source as if it is a proper module:

You can see it is working in vscode. But it does not when I run test with ts-node:

// package.json
{
  "scripts": {
    "test": "ts-node -P tsconfig.build.json node_modules/blue-tape/bin/blue-tape \"test/**/*.ts\" | tap-spec"
  }
}

The error is:

Error: Cannot find module 'blue-tape-fixture'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:325:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:276:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:353:17)

You can see it here: https://github.com/unional/blue-tape-fixture/tree/ts-node

# clone
npm install
npm test

[blakeembrey]

@unional That's the node.js error - TypeScript is working fine, but node will never be able to resolve an alias like that unless TypeScript emits code that rewrites paths. What do you think is the solution here?

[unional]

I see. In order for it to work, a module-path-rewriter need to be written and loaded by ts-node.
Alternatively is to load the transpiled code dist/*, which kind of defeat the purpose of ts-node (I said kind of because the test files, in this use case, can remain as ts files).

[blakeembrey]

This module uses the emitted code though - it's TypeScript itself that doesn't do any rewriting right?

[unional]

Just check. Nope it does not do any rewriting. Seems like the baseUrl and paths is only used during compilation. By design or bug on TS side?

[unional]

Updated https://github.com/unional/blue-tape-fixture/tree/ts-node to demo the issue.
run npm run build-test and see under dist/test/index.ts. It is still requiring blue-tape-fixture

[unional]

Confirm above statement: microsoft/TypeScript#5039 (comment)

[blakeembrey]

@unional Yeah, it's tricky. I can understand TypeScript's stance, if they don't have a solution for it built-in I think we can investigate adding a plugin once they implement the pluggable transforms in TypeScript 2.0. This is definitely more of a user-land feature.

[sanex3339]

any news? i want to use 'paths' option in my tests

[blakeembrey]

No, it does not work and is not expected to work. Someone can still implement a plugin (which would be very valuable to others too!), but I am not currently working on it.

[jonaskello]

Maybe this could be solved by augmenting node's loading rather than having typescript re-write the paths. There are some alternatives mentioned here. In particular I'm thinking that wrapping the global require and just changing the path according to tsconfig would be the simplest solution.

[jonaskello]

When I looked closer I realised that wrapping global require is not possible in a way that replaces it (the example above installs a separate require function). However it is possible to patch Module._load like is done in mock-require. I did some experiments with this and it seems doable. I'll try to put together a PR to demonstrate.

[jonaskello]

For those interested I did a PR to enable execution of projects with tsconfig paths in #254.

[jonaskello]

Instead of the PR, I have now created the tsconfig-paths package that makes it possible to automatically resolve paths during execution with ts-node, node, or mocha. Just follow the instructions in the readme.

[shirakaba]

Note to all using @jonaskello 's tsconfig-paths:

The errror "Missing paths in compilerOptions. tsconfig-paths will be skipped" means that you don't have any paths property specified in your tsconfig.json. I had been able to use imports relative to my src directory just by specifying "baseUrl": ".", but to get ts-node/node/mocha to understand the same imports, I also needed to specify a paths property in my tsconfig.json, eg:

"paths": {
  "src/*" : ["./src/*"]
}

Hope this helps another overwhelmed soul.

[michaeljota]

@shirakaba Just a note, you can set your "baseUrl" to "./src/" and "paths" like this

"paths": {
  "*" : ["./*"]
}

I will be the same, but you are able to add more paths with the same root more easily.

[ashok-sc]

I've tried nearly all the above solutions and I'm still getting Module not found: Error: Can't resolve ....

What's the solution here? I have updated my tsconfig.json webpack.config.js and even tried tsconfig-paths. None of these work.

//tsconfig.json
{
  ...
  "baseUrl": "./src",
    "paths": {
      "@src/*": [
        "*"
      ]
    }
}

[jonaskello]

@ashok-sc ts-node has no support for paths in tsconfig.json, and no plans to add it. I think your best bet to get it working is using tsconfig-paths. If you have trouble using it feel free to file an issue at that repo.

If you are using webpack the scenario is quite different. If you are using ts-loader you might want to try tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin altough it is still early in development. If you are using awesome typescript loader then it has this type of plug-in built-in.

[michaeljota]

@ashok-sc As @jonaskello said, there is no plan to support path, as you need to replace the path call with the proper full path in order to be understandable for Webpack. You could use Awesome Typescript Loader that have a plugin out-the-box for that, but still, it needs to be a plugin.

[ashok-sc]

Hey @jonaskello and @michaeljota thanks for the help! I am in fact using awesome-typescript-loader with webpack. However, the instructions are quite poor. I understand that you may not have the answers here, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.

The instructions state to add the TsConfigPathsPlugin, but it's not clear as to what it needs in the constructor. Here's what I tried:

new TsConfigPathsPlugin({
    configFileName: path.join(__dirname, './tsconfig.json'),
    compiler: 'typescript'
  })

This doesn't seem to work though and I still get module not found.

Anyway, if you don't have the answer of the top of your head feel free to ignore.

[jonaskello]

Here's a gist of what a webpack config should look like with awesome-typescript-loader's tsconfig paths plugin. I don't pass anything in the constructor in my config, but maybe you need it if your tsconfig.json is in a non-standard location.

var TsConfigPathsPlugin = require('awesome-typescript-loader').TsConfigPathsPlugin;

module.exports = {
	entry: ...,
	output: ...,
	resolve: {
		extensions: ['...'],
		plugins: [
			new TsConfigPathsPlugin()
		]
	}
}

[jonaskello]

@ashok-sc If it does not work, you can try version 0.2.0 of tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin. I have added code that prints the path that it tries to load the tsconfig.json from.

Note, tsconfig-paths-webpack-plugin is used instead of the one in awesome-typscript-loader. You can also use it with ts-loader.

[viT-1]

@alexeychikk

1. module-alias not the best way if you use es6
   Not working with native ES modules ilearnio/module-alias#59
2. If project doesn't use webpack "even webpack" is not usecase.
3. May be you can help me to configure tsconfig-paths to use it as npm script with ts-node for script.ts and extended tsconfig containing outDir?
   Bug with extends property in tsconfig dividab/tsconfig-paths#39

[SephReed]

@jonaskello You saved my ass here!

Is there any reason why this shouldn't become a default built in part of ts-node? It seems like it would make more sense to include this by default, than to not.

[bennycode]

Thanks @jonaskello!

It also seems to work when using ts-node through nyc:

nyc.config.js

module.exports = {
  all: false,
  exclude: ['**/*.d.ts', '**/*.test*.ts', '**/index.ts'],
  extension: ['.ts'],
  include: ['src/**/*.ts'],
  reporter: ['text-summary'],
  require: ['tsconfig-paths/register', 'ts-node/register'],
};

[talwrii]

Thank you to janaskello for tsconfig-paths a slight annoyance I have is that it seems like tsconfig-paths needs to be installed in projects themselves for ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register to work - which is a bit of a pain for third party libraries (my use case of understanding someone else code is perhaps unusual).

I'd also like to say that on newer versions of node you get a MODULE_NOT_FOUND error (other page about this suggest deleting and reinstalling things for this). It's odd how ts-node in one says can "find" the library (because if a file does not exist you get a different error) but then fails to import.

I would vote for ts-node refusing to run if paths is set given that this error is a little cryptic (I didn't find this page until I guessed that the problem might be because ts-node is ignoring paths and googled this - working in someone elses repo).

[blephy]

I was running on the same issue when running webpack with ts-node (i'm using Typescript language webpack configuration) but already followed the webpack documentation and installed tsconfig-paths.

Just putting "moduleResolution": "node" into my tsconfig.webpack.json resolved the issue.

Hope this help

[SephReed]

@jonaskello You saved my ass here!

Is there any reason why this shouldn't become a default built in part of ts-node? It seems like it would make more sense to include this by default, than to not.

Apparently I've been through this before... lol.

This really probably should become default behavior.

[rachaeldawn]

Okay, so I found a solution that works reasonably well for my use-case. I needed this just for Knex's knexfile.ts and couldn't find a solution

Constraints:

• Every "path" in paths I have has only 1 item in the array
• I am able to use module-alias as a dev dependency
• I have only 1 file that requires this fix, however putting this in a fix-paths.ts file works if it is is imported first
• I am able to use "resolveJsonModule": true

Code

import moduleAlias from 'module-alias';
import * as path from 'path';
import { compilerOptions } from './tsconfig.json';

const root = path.join(__dirname, compilerOptions.baseUrl || '');

for (const [key, paths] of Object.entries(compilerOptions.paths)) {
  const target = path.join(root, paths[0]);
  moduleAlias.addAlias(key, target);
}

[SephReed]

Clearly I'm a weirdo. This is my fourth time finding this thread, but it doesn't appear to get much activity. It's probably because I use mono-repos.

For future me coming back here, this is the link: https://www.npmjs.com/package/tsconfig-paths

[fatihaziz]

maybe my workaround will help:

1. install required plugins:
   npm i -D ttypescript typescript-transform-paths ts-node tsconfig-paths.
   these are packages that will help us to transform the paths.

2. then, on tsconfig.json, i put:

   {
    "ts-node": {
      "transpileOnly": true,
      "require": [  // set this so you dont need to use ts-node -r 
    	"typescript-transform-paths/register",
    	"tsconfig-paths/register"
       ]
    },         
    "compilerOptions": {
       "composite": true,
       "rootDir": ".", // must define
       "baseUrl": "src", // must define, the paths will relative to this
       "outDir": "lib", 
       "skipLibCheck": false,
       "paths": {
    	"@app/*": ["./*"],
    	"@controllers/*": ["./controllers/*"],
       },
        "plugins": [
    	  { "transform": "typescript-transform-paths" }
        ]
    }
   }
   

3. then we can use this on our codes everywhere:

   import myControllers from "@controllers/main.ts"
   

4. then to compile, we need to run npx ttsc -p tsconfig.json , we use npx so we dont need to install ttypescript globally

5. and to run on ts-node, we can simply run npx ts-node -p tsconfig.json src/app.ts, also npx for ts-node.

My conclusion:
To workaround with ts-node paths, we need tsconfig-paths required on ts-node runtime.
but on production we just need to compile them into absolute path, so we use ttypescript and typescript-transform-paths to compile and transform the module paths to absolute path.
then the program can work fine with node without registering tsconfig-paths or any plugins
like node lib/index.js

I hope this solution will help,
also sorry if my word kinda messed up, i try to explain it as simple as possible.

[puchm]

Does anyone have an idea on how to work around this issue when using ESM? I am normally using node --loader ts-node/esm <path> to start scripts but I could not get it to work using any of the solutions proposed here.

[danielo515]

@fatihaziz you answer saved my life, thanks!

[droplessdeclan]

@puchm Did you ever manage to find a solution to this? I'm having the same issue

[cspotcode]

For a solution you can use today, see #1450

Path mapping is being added as a built-in feature of ts-node in an upcoming release. To follow progress, see #1585