Intellisense for nodejs required packages.

[abhilashsajeev]

var express = require('express');

var app = express();

var port = process.env.PORT || 3000;

app.listen(port);

In the following code I required express but when I enter app and press crtl + space it shows no suggestions.

It would be nice to have code assist for installed packages because nodejs developers always play with packages.

[SamVerschueren]

@jrieken Is this possible to implement without something like a (typescript) definition file?

[jrieken]

very hard. behind the scenes we just the typescript compiler to drive JS. There is a branch in TS that adds deep understanding of commonjs modules. Once we have adopted that we will be better off.

[SamVerschueren]

Good to know :).

[abhilashsajeev]

As vscode is marketed as a nodejs IDE I think it is very important to add this support. This will make Webstorm has this kind of support but its too heavy.

[SamVerschueren]

I never saw VS Code marketed as an IDE to be honest, but maybe I just missed that :). In my opinion, VS Code is an enhanced text editor, just like Atom or Sublime Text. If you want an IDE, go for Visual Studio, Eclipse, Webstorm, etc. ;)

Apart from that, it would be very nice to have this. I was only asking @jrieken if it was possible as I was interested in the technology behind it and to how it can be accomplished.

[abhilashsajeev]

@SamVerschueren

That is in the home page.

I think having this feature will be of great advantage for vs code compared to other editors.

[jrieken]

In full agreement - VS Code should have the best JS support you can get, like the same is true for TS, C#, go you name it.

As of today our JS support is a little rusty, incomplete, and buggy. The TS team works on better support for plain JS and once they are ready we will jump on it.

@SamVerschueren The details are crazy ;-) We take JS code, create a copy with TS-constructs on the fly, pass that to the TS compiler, and map the results back to original JS code. This guy for instance takes require('foo').toString() and generates something like import * as $$foo;\n$$foo.toString() to make TS types flow better.

[abhilashsajeev]

@jrieken : So the support for this feature will take some time to implement.

[SamVerschueren]

@jrieken So type definitions won't be necessary anymore in the future as they can be generated on the fly? Or will tsc still need them?

[jrieken]

depends... Even if tsc understands this

module.exports.foo = function(a, b, c) {
   return a * b;
}

to be a module that exports a member foo of type function you will need to help it out the types of the parameters. They cannot be inferred by TS. That's why there are d.ts-files

[jrieken]

@abhilashsajeev The TS team is working on this since a while and close to finish

[jrieken]

All details in here: microsoft/TypeScript#4789

[abhilashsajeev]

@jrieken 👍 Thats great! as long as this comes out I would completly switch my node.js devs to vs code. Hope to have this by end of year.

[sarbbottam]

Is there any update on this, microsoft/TypeScript#4789 has been fixed.

[egamma]

@sarbbottam yes, Code is now using Salsa. Currently Salsa still requires that you install .d.ts files.

@abhilashsajeev Once you do tsd install express node then you get nice Intellisense:

[sarbbottam]

Thanks @egamma. Is there no way to get intellisense with out tsd files?
If I have to depend on tsd I did not require salsa. Not sure what benefit salsa has brought with this regard.

[SamVerschueren]

// Offtopic
tsd is deprecated in favor of typings.

[egamma]

@SamVerschueren correct, and we have already updated our docs.

[SamVerschueren]

@egamma nice 👍

[egamma]

@sarbbottam

Thanks @egamma. Is there no way to get intellisense with out tsd files?

Pls see https://code.visualstudio.com/Updates#_languages-javascript for scenarios where you do not need .d.ts files, but the type information that isn't in JS has to come from somewhere, e.g. JSDoc comments.

[NickGrease]

Can someone please tell me if this is supposed to work? I've spent the entire day reading just about everything I can - which was a mistake, because I'm pretty sure no one on the planet has the same answer - yes,no,with d.ts,without d.ts, typings, dst, .jsconfig, .tsconfig, user settings, etc - not one straight answer.

Sorry.

[SamVerschueren]

Yes that works, but it seems that module.exports.generateCanvas should be exports.generateCanvas. This seems to be a bug because they are equivalent. If you add internal documentation, that documentation is also attached to the intellisense.

Some notes to take into account.

• This is only the case for VS Code 0.10.11 (fixed in the insiders build and in the next release). When you require file1.js in a new file, it does not provide intellisense right away, it has to reload the project first by closing and reopening the project.
• module.exports does not work for intellisense. Will create an issue for that.

[SamVerschueren]

Issue created #4943

[NickGrease]

@SamVerschueren I was a bit frustrated previously, so thank you for your time. I am using the Insider edition, and the code you wrote does indeed work. At some point yesterday in my attempt to fix my issue, I had downloaded typings, and installed several (node,browserify) d.ts files to my original project, and the fix you proposed above didn't work until I deleted the typings folder in my project. However, I couldn't duplicate that behavior in a new project. I'm happy just to get intellisense working again, so thanks for helping me out.

[jrieken]

Closing this as we have moved to project Salsa. Let's discuss new issues separately.

[shakvaal]

@jrieken Could you please provide a link?

[jrieken]

Salsa is part of TypeScript (basically the allowJs flag): https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript