Using TypeORM in an Ionic project

You can use TypeORM in connection with the cordova-sqlite-storage plugin in your Ionic app. This project demonstrates how that would work.

TypeORM >= 0.1.7

To support webpack builds outside of Ionic we had to remove the automatic selection of the correct TypeORM version (the typeorm package comes with a Node and a browser version). In order to keep using TypeORM with Ionic you have to create a custom webpack.config.js file. This example contains one that is identical to the one Ionic uses when no config file is specified but adds the NormalModuleReplacementPlugin to select the correct version. If you already have a custom webpack config file you have to add these lines to your plugins (for both development and production):

plugins: [
  ...,
  new webpack.NormalModuleReplacementPlugin(/typeorm$/, function (result) {
    result.request = result.request.replace(/typeorm/, "typeorm/browser");
  }),
  new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
    'window.SQL': 'sql.js/js/sql.js'
  })
]

If you don't use a custom wepack config, copy the one from this example and add it to your package.json under config:

"config": {
  "ionic_webpack": "./config/webpack.config.js"
}

Installation

To run this example in production or development mode you have to make sure, ionic and cordova are installed globally on your machine. After that you can install all necessary dependencies for running this example.

0. Check if npm is installed. Otherwise please install node.js and npm.

npm -v

1. Install ionic and cordova command line interface globally.

npm install -g cordova ionic

2. Install all dependencies listed in package.json.

npm install

Run app in development mode

3. Run the app in your browser:

ionic serve

Run app in production mode

3. Add an iOS or Android platform to your project:

ionic cordova platform add ios 
# or 
ionic cordova platform add android

4. Run the app on your device:

ionic cordova run ios
# or
ionic cordova run android

For further information please read ionic's deployment guide.

Using TypeORM in your own app

1. Install the plugin: ionic cordova plugin add cordova-sqlite-storage --save

2. Install TypeORM: npm install typeorm --save

3. Install node.js-Types: npm install @types/node --save-dev

4. Add "typeRoots": ["node_modules/@types"] to your tsconfig.json under compilerOptions

5. Create a custom webpack config file like the one included in this project to use the correct TypeORM version and add the config file to your package.json (Required with TypeORM >= 0.1.7)

Limitations to TypeORM when using production builds

Since Ionic make a lot of optimizations while building for production, the following limitations will occur:

1. Entities have to be marked with the table name (eg @Entity('table_name'))

2. getRepository() has to be called with the name of the entity instead of the class (eg getRepository('post') as Repository<Post>)

3. Date fields are not supported:

@Column()
birthdate: Date;