Support for Node.js 16 for Azure Pipelines custom pipelines task extensions has arrived. From a TypeScript perspective, this post documents how to migrate from a Node.js 10 custom task to one that runs on Node 16 using azure-pipelines-task-lib.
The React useState hook is a great way to persist state inside the context of a component in React. This post demonstrates a simple React hook that stores state in the URL querystring, building on top of React Routers useSearchParams hook.
Logs matter. In Azure, logs generally live in Application Insights, in the Transaction Search section. This post reverse engineers the Azure Application Insights Transactions URL, and details how to construct a link to take you directly there, using both TypeScript and C#.
As part of the TypeScript 4.7 release comes a major upgrade to ECMAScript Module Support for Node.js. This post takes a look at what that means.
The upgrade of the React type definitions to support React 18 involved some significant breaking changes. This post digs into that and examines what the upgrade path looks like.
Recently, a new ECMAScript proposal called "Type Annotations" (originally named "Types as Comments") was revealed. The purpose is to allow type annotations to be valid JavaScript syntax. Albeit syntax that is ignored by JavaScript engines. The proposal is being worked on by Gil Tayar, Daniel Rosenwasser, Romulo Cintra, Rob Palmer, and others. Many of these people are from TypeScript community - however this proposal intentionally does not exist to benefit TypeScript alone.
There's a debate to be had about whether using JavaScript or TypeScript leads to better outcomes when building a project. The introduction of using JSDoc annotations to type a JavaScript codebase introduces a new dynamic to this discussion. This post will investigate what that looks like, and come to an (opinionated) conclusion.
Google has a wealth of APIs which we can interact with. At the time of writing, there's more than two hundred available; including YouTube, Google Calendar and GMail (alongside many others). To integrate with these APIs, it's necessary to authenticate and then use that credential with the API. This post will take you through how to do just that using TypeScript. It will also demonstrate how to use one of those APIs: the Google Calendar API.
An exciting feature is shipping with TypeScript 4.4. It has the name "Control Flow Analysis of Aliased Conditions" which is quite a mouthful. This post unpacks what this feature is, and demonstrates the contribution it makes to improving the readability of code.
TypeScript has the ability to define classes as abstract. This means they cannot be instantiated directly, only non-abstract subclasses can be. Let's take a look at what this means when it comes to constructor usage.
React 18 alpha has been released; but can we use it with TypeScript? The answer is "yes", but you need to do a couple of things to make that happen. This post will show you what to do.
The Service Now REST API is an API which allows you to interact with Service Now. It produces different shaped results based upon the sysparm_display_value query parameter. This post looks at how we can model these API results with TypeScripts conditional types. The aim being to minimise repetition whilst remaining strongly typed. This post is specifically about the Service Now API, but the principles around conditional type usage are generally applicable.
ts-loader has just released v9.0.0. This post goes through what this release is all about, and what it took to ship this version. For intrigue, it includes a brief scamper into my mental health along the way. Some upgrades go smoothly - this one had some hiccups. But we'll get into that.
This post documents how to migrate a blog from Blogger to Docusaurus.
Generating clients for APIs is a tremendous way to reduce the amount of work you have to do when you're building a project. Why handwrite that code when it can be auto-generated for you quickly and accurately by a tool like NSwag? To quote the docs:
Create React App is a fantastic way to get up and running building a web app with React. It also supports using TypeScript with React. Simply entering the following:
Never neglect the possibilities of a code review. There are times when you raise a PR and all you want is for everyone to hit approve so you can merge, merge and ship, ship! This can be a missed opportunity. For as much as I'd like to imagine my code is perfect, it's patently not. There's always scope for improvement.
JavaScript is famously single threaded. However, if you're developing for the web, you may well know that this is not quite accurate. There are Web Workers:
I'd like to tell you a story. It's the tale of the ecosystem that grew up around a language: TypeScript. TypeScript is, for want of a better description, JavaScript after a trip to Saville Row. Essentially the same language, but a little more together, a little less wild west. JS with a decent haircut and a new suit. These days, the world seems to be written in TypeScript. And when you pause to consider just how young the language is, well, that's kind of amazing.