reactjs - absolute path with react, react-app-rewire and typescript

Question

i'm using create-react-app + typescript, and i want to add absolute paths.

i'm trying to get to the point i can use absolute paths, like so:

instead of import x from '../../../components/shell/shell'

use import x from '@components/shell/shell';

here is tsconfig.json file:

{
  "extends": "./paths.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es5",
    "lib": [
      "dom",
      "dom.iterable",
      "esnext"
    ],
    "allowJs": true,
    "baseUrl": "src",
    "skipLibCheck": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "strict": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
    "module": "esnext",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "resolveJsonModule": true,
    "isolatedModules": true,
    "noEmit": true,
    "jsx": "react"
  },
  "include": [
    "src"
  ]
}

I'm using extended file for paths, because from some reason npm start overrides the file. so is paths.json file:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": "./src",
    "paths": {
      "@": ["./src"],
      "@components/*": ["components/*]"
    }
  }
}

i also have an .env file:

NODE_PATH=src

i installed react-app-rewire so i can config the paths, and my config-ovverrides.js file looks like this:

module.exports = {
  paths: function(paths, env) {
    // ...add your paths config
    return paths;
  }
};

im stuck with connecting all the dots, it doesn't work and i still cant see what i need to do in order to config the webpack path object;

how can i implement paths in cra, ts, and rewire?

Answer 1

You can solve it using 5 simple steps withou eject:

Step 1: Adding react-app-rewired into your devDependencies.

yarn add -D react-app-rewired or npm intall react-app-rewired --save-dev

Step 2: After installation, you'll be able to change package.json default ReactsJS scripts to:

"scripts": {  
  "start": "react-app-rewired start",  
  "build": "react-app-rewired build",  
  "test": "react-app-rewired test",  
  "eject": "react-app-rewired eject" 
}

Step 3: Creates a new file called tsconfig.paths.json on root path, with content like:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "paths": {
      "services/*": ["./src/shared/services/*"],
      "interfaces/*": ["./src/shared/interfaces/*"]
    }
  }
}

Tip 1: you can choose which path you want to use, like: @services, @interface, @src, ~, @, etc just by changing the keys inside "paths": {}

The same is applied to it's value: ["src/shared/services/"], ["src/shared/interfaces/"], ["src/*"], use the relative path here.

Step 4: Into tsconfig.json, before "compilerOptions" you need to extends the tsconfig.paths.json you just created.

Like this:

{
  "extends": "./tsconfig.paths.json",
  ...//rest of file infos compilerOptions, include... whatever
}

Step 5: Creates a new file config-overrides.js, adding your alias and relative paths on it:

const path = require('path');

module.exports = function override(config) {
  config.resolve = {
    ...config.resolve,
    alias: {
      ...config.alias,
      'services': path.resolve(__dirname, 'src/shared/services'),
      'interfaces': path.resolve(__dirname, 'src/shared/interfaces')
    },
  };

  return config;
};

Tip 2: If you're using eslint, remember to have an .eslintignore file and add config-overrides.js within it.

Restart your IDE or text editor, in my case VSCode.

It's DONE! Now just run yarn start or npm run start