A quick and simple transpiler for resolving path aliases in typescript.

Here is a nice trick that I would like to share if you are working with typescript and path aliases.

Suppose you have a typescript project, and you are in love with path aliases.

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

Path aliases are great. They allow us to write sane, readable import statements.

// It sucks to write this:
import { widget } from '../../../../lib/widget.js'
// This is way better:
import { widget } from '@/lib/widget.js

However our path aliases will not work at run-time, so we need a way to convert them back into relative imports.

Microsoft refuses to add path resolution to typescript, so many folks turn to third-party tools. But many of these tools are buggy, abandoned, baked into specific frameworks, or part of some complex tool-chain.

I don't want a new framework or toolchain. I just want sensible path resolution!

So I wrote a very basic script for transpiling code, using good uncle sed:

#!/bin/bash

## A quick and simple transpiler for resolving path aliases in our codebase.

DIRECTORY="./dist"  # The file path to search.
EXTENSION="js"      # The file extension to look for.
ABSOLUTE_PATH="@/"  # The path sub-string we are targeting.
DEPTH_OFFSET=3      # Offset our depth counter. Adjust to your needs.

# Loop through all files in the directory that match the specified extension.
find "$DIRECTORY" -name "*.$EXTENSION" -type f | while read -r file
do
    # Count the number of slashes in the file's path to determine its depth
    DEPTH=$(echo "$file" | tr -cd '/' | wc -c)
    
    # Build a relative path string based on the depth.
    RELATIVE_PATH=""
    for (( i=DEPTH_OFFSET; i<=$DEPTH; i++ ))
    do
        RELATIVE_PATH="../$RELATIVE_PATH"
    done
    
    # Use sed to perform the in-place replacement.
    sed -i "s|$ABSOLUTE_PATH|$RELATIVE_PATH|g" "$file"
done

Now I can transpile my code with this neat build script:

// package.json
"scripts": {
   "build": "rm -rf ./dist && tsc && ./transpile.sh",
 }

It works great. Zero dependencies!

I hope you find this gist useful, and fall in love with path aliases. Thank you for reading!

cmdruid/transpile.md