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Node.js tutorial in Visual Studio Code
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Node.js tutorial in Visual Studio Code

Node.js is a platform for building fast and scalable server applications using JavaScript. Node.js is the runtime and npm is the Package Manager for Node.js modules.

Visual Studio Code has support for the JavaScript and TypeScript languages out-of-the-box as well as Node.js debugging. However, to run a Node.js application, you will need to install the Node.js runtime on your machine.

To get started in this walkthrough, install Node.js for your platform. The Node Package Manager is included in the Node.js distribution. You'll need to open a new terminal (command prompt) for the node and npm command-line tools to be on your PATH.

To test that you have Node.js installed correctly on your computer, open a new terminal and type node --version and you should see the current Node.js version installed.

Linux: There are specific Node.js packages available for the various flavors of Linux. See Installing Node.js via package manager to find the Node.js package and installation instructions tailored to your version of Linux.

Windows Subsystem for Linux: If you are on Windows, WSL is a great way to do Node.js development. You can run Linux distributions on Windows and install Node.js into the Linux environment. When coupled with the WSL extension, you get full VS Code editing and debugging support while running in the context of WSL. To learn more, go to Developing in WSL or try the Working in WSL tutorial.

Hello World

Let's get started by creating the simplest Node.js application, "Hello World".

Create an empty folder called "hello", navigate into and open VS Code:

var msg = 'Hello World'; console.log(msg);

Note that when you typed console. IntelliSense on the console object was automatically presented to you.

Also notice that VS Code knows that msg is a string based on the initialization to 'Hello World'. If you type msg. you'll see IntelliSense showing all of the string functions available on msg.

After experimenting with IntelliSense, revert any extra changes from the source code example above and save the file (⌘S (Windows, Linux Ctrl+S)).

Running Hello World

It's simple to run app.js with Node.js. From a terminal, just type:

npm install -g express-generator

The -g switch installs the Express Generator globally on your machine so you can run it from anywhere.

We can now scaffold a new Express application called myExpressApp by running:

cd myExpressApp npm install

At this point, we should test that our application runs. The generated Express application has a package.json file which includes a start script to run node ./bin/www. This will start the Node.js application running.

From a terminal in the Express application folder, run:

code .

Note: If you've been using the VS Code integrated terminal to install the Express generator and scaffold the app, you can open the myExpressApp folder from your running VS Code instance with the File > Open Folder command.

The Node.js and Express documentation does a great job explaining how to build rich applications using the platform and framework. Visual Studio Code will make you more productive in developing these types of applications by providing great code editing and navigation experiences.

Open the file app.js and hover over the Node.js global object __dirname. Notice how VS Code understands that __dirname is a string. Even more interesting, you can get full IntelliSense against the Node.js framework. For example, you can require http and get full IntelliSense against the http class as you type in Visual Studio Code.

VS Code uses TypeScript type declaration (typings) files (for example node.d.ts) to provide metadata to VS Code about the JavaScript based frameworks you are consuming in your application. Type declaration files are written in TypeScript so they can express the data types of parameters and functions, allowing VS Code to provide a rich IntelliSense experience. Thanks to a feature called Automatic Type Acquisition, you do not have to worry about downloading these type declaration files, VS Code will install them automatically for you.

You can also write code that references modules in other files. For example, in app.js we require the ./routes/index module, which exports an Express.Router class. If you bring up IntelliSense on index, you can see the shape of the Router class.

Debug your Express app

You will need to create a debugger configuration file launch.json for your Express application. Click on Run and Debug in the Activity Bar (⇧⌘D (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+D)) and then select the create a launch.json file link to create a default launch.json file. Select the Node.js environment by ensuring that the type property in configurations is set to "node". When the file is first created, VS Code will look in package.json for a start script and will use that value as the program (which in this case is "${workspaceFolder}\\bin\\www) for the Launch Program configuration.