In VS Code, you may have noticed that if you are using a third-party JavaScript library in your front-end code, you don't get any IntelliSense goodness. 🙁
This is for the case where you using a script tag to include a third-party library.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
...
</head>
<body>
...
<script src="https://unpkg.co/gsap@3/dist/gsap.min.js"></script>
<script src="main.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
In this example, I'm including the Greensock (GSAP) animation library. In main.js, I don't get IntelliSense for GSAP.
IntelliSense for JavaScript libraries and frameworks is powered by TypeScript type declaration files (files with the .d.ts extension) . Type declaration files are written in TypeScript so that they can express the data types of parameters and functions, allowing VS Code to provide a rich IntelliSense experience.
VS Code has automatic type aquisition, which means that it will automatically fetch these types for you, but with a big caveat.
Type declaration files are automatically downloaded and managed by Visual Studio Code for packages listed in your project's package.json or that you import into a JavaScript file.
In my use case, I do neither. This is a fairly common scenario in front-end codebases.
Gimme, gimme. Im getting IntelliSense withdrawal! 😖
The simplest solution is to find the NPM package with the types, and include it as a dev dependency. This way, your code can remain the same.
npm install --save-dev @types/gsap
Types for some libraries are sourced from the DefinitelyTyped GitHub repo. Many popular packages follow this @types/<<library name>> naming convention also. You can search for NPM packages that have type definitions using https://www.typescriptlang.org/dt/search.
You may find that some packages are not up-to-date. I found @types/gsap to be incomplete. It does not include a definition for the gsap object. The gsap npm package covers the entire API. So, you can install that as a dependency instead - npm install --save-dev gsap.
One thing to note is that the type definitions don't provide IntelliSense inside script tags in your HTML file. There is an open issue requesting this feature. Hopefully, this will be resolved in the near future! 🤞
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Top comments (8)
Thanks for this post, I am really trying to understand the whole idea of. D. Td files. Please do you know how react knows that functional components return 'JSX. Element'? I am really trying to implement that in a project.
*. d. ts
You can read about declaration files in this tutorial.
I don't use React, so I would not be able to give you an answer with regard to React. In declaration files, you can specify the return type of any function.
Thanks a lot I have been trying to implement that in something I am doing, thanks a lot.
🤔 I thought VSCode automatically downloaded them for you: code.visualstudio.com/docs/nodejs/...
Hi Thomas,
You need a
package.jsonor import statements in your JavaScript file for automatic acquisition. They mention it in the docs section you included.So, if you are just including a library like GSAP in a script tag in your HTML, you don't get intellisense automatically. This is more likely to the case in front-end code. In a backend project, you probably have a
package.jsonwith dependencies, so you probably wouldn't encounter this!I will add this to the article to give a complete explanation.
Thanks for the precision.
I have to say I didn't get the distinction because I almost always reach for additional tools (ESLint, Prettier, Babel, some bundler like Parcel or Rollup) as soon as the project reaches a size where I also need a third-party library.
Yes, that's why you never encountered it!
It kinda sucks for beginners who wouldn't be using NPM automatically. I often go without NPM for creative coding and small projects. It's not a great situation to be bound so tightly to the additional tools!
I updated the article with that distinction. Thanks for the feedback.