I'm working on a Node JS (+Express) project in Visual Studio Code, and am wondering if there is a way to reference TypeScript definitions in one global spot, rather than having to re-reference definitions in every JS file.

I see that VSCode supports tsconfigs, but I don't think .tsconfig files have a section for that.

I'm working on a Node JS (+Express) project in Visual Studio Code, and am wondering if there is a way to reference TypeScript definitions in one global spot, rather than having to re-reference definitions in every JS file.

I see that VSCode supports tsconfigs, but I don't think .tsconfig files have a section for that.

• javascript
• typescript
• visual-studio-code

• 1 Generally external tools which only use tsc require that you include a reference at the top of every file. Visual Studio has a feature which does this automatically, but I'm not sure if this is included in "Code" – CodingIntrigue Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 18:17
• see answer: stackoverflow./a/40861142/187650 – juFo Commented Nov 29, 2016 at 8:37

2 Answers 2

In some editors you can use the filesGlob property in tsconfig.json to simplify references.

For example:

"filesGlob": [
    "./scripts/*.ts",
    "!./node_modules/**/*.ts"
]

However, this will work with the TypeScript piler only when TypeScript 2 is released (see globs):

Or you can specify individual files:

"files": [
    "./scripts/app.ts",
    "./scripts/other.d.ts"
]

Okay so after a couple of restarts with Code, it seems that most of the time it will pick up the typescript definitions that you've included in other files.

I think I'll still go with Steve's answer though, as that way I can avoid having a bunch of references in my code.