How to add typescript to Vue 3 and Vite project

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My setup: I installed Vue and Vite via the create-vite-app module, and then updated all the packages that was generated by 'init vite-app' to the very latest RC versions for Vue and Vite.

Now I want to use typescript for all my code. First I just played around a little bit, and added the lang="ts" to the tag in HelloWorld.vue. That seems to work, though I have no idea how typescript gets transpiled from the vue file though.

Then I tried to rename the main.js to main.ts. Now nothing happen.

I was thinking that I just need to install typescript, but then it hit me, why is it working in the .vue component then? Am I doing something wrong if I install typescript now?

Why does typescript work in the vue module (HelloWorld), but no js is generated from the *.ts file?

3 Answers

How to add typescript to Vue 3 and Vite project

I will create a vite project to use typescript step by step:

  • first, we should create a vite project at first
$ npm init vite-app <project-name>
$ cd <project-name>
$ npm install
  • second, we should install typescript
$ npm install typescript
  • third, we should create a tsconfig.json file in the root folder, like this:
{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "esnext",
    "module": "esnext",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "importHelpers": true,
    "isolatedModules": true,
    "noEmit": true
  }
}

And you can check here, What is a tsconfig.json

  • then, we sholud create a shims-vue.d.tsfile in the src folder, like this:
declare module "*.vue" {
  import { defineComponent } from "vue";
  const Component: ReturnType<typeof defineComponent>;
  export default Component;
}

The shims-vue.d.ts file helps your IDE to understand what a file ending in .vue is.
Now, we can check whether the .ts file works well.
In my case, i rename the main.js file to main.ts in the src folder,
and modify the index.html, 12 line:

 <script type="module" src="/src/main.js"></script> 

to

 <script type="module" src="/src/main.ts"></script> 

At last, run

npm run dev

If there is no error message, you can create your component file by .ts
Good luck!

Per the latest docs, you can run one of the following commands which will give you the choice of framework and typescript options:

npm init vite@latest

yarn create vite

pnpm dlx create-vite

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