30-04-2021

Visual Studio Code Node Js



I am amazed at the adoption of Visual Studio Code by developers from all platforms and languages. According to the 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, VS Code is dominating. The primary reasons I use VS Code are its great support for debugging JavaScript and Node.js code, and how easy it is to customize with free extensions available in Visual Studio Marketplace.

However, there are thousands of extensions available! How do you know which ones are good to use?

Vue.js is a popular JavaScript library for building web application user interfaces and Visual Studio Code has built-in support for the Vue.js building blocks of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. For a richer Vue.js development environment, you can install the Vetur extension which supports Vue.js IntelliSense, code snippets, formatting, and more. The Visual Studio Code editor supports debugging Electron applications via the built-in Node.js debugger and the Debugger for Chrome extension.

One way is to look at an extensions average rating and the number of downloads to gauge its popularity. Another way is to read personal opinion posts like this one. And here you are!

Here are my top picks for Visual Studio Code extensions for Node.js developers.

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2

  • Browse other questions tagged node.js visual-studio-code or ask your own question. The Overflow Blog How often do people actually copy and paste from Stack Overflow? Podcast 331: One in four visitors to Stack Overflow copies code. Featured on Meta Stack Overflow for Teams is now free for up to 50 users, forever.
  • Npm allows you to install and manage packages for use in your Node.js applications. Visual Studio makes it easy to interact with npm and issue npm commands through the UI or directly. For existing Node.js projects, use the From existing Node.js code solution template or the Open folder (Node.js) project type to enable npm in your project.

I try to keep my code as simple as possible and not nest too many things. Unfortunately, sometimes it is unavoidable. Bracket Pair Colorizer 2 colorizes matching brackets, making it easier to visually see which opening and closing brackets, braces, or parentheses belong to each other.

Visual Studio Code Node Js Setup

npm

The npm extension provides two features: running npm scripts defined in the package.json in the editor and validating the packages listed in the package.json.

npm Intellisense

The npm Intellisense extension introduces autocomplete behavior when you use require() to import modules into your code.

ESLint

When I initialize a new Node.js project folder, the first thing I install from the terminal is ESLint.

The ESLint extension uses your local ESLint and configured rules to look for common patterns and issues in JavaScript code, and is designed to help you write better code with fewer bugs. ESLint can also reformat your code to make it more consistent, depending on the rules you have enabled for your project. Be sure to enable Auto Fix On Save ('eslint.autoFixOnSave': true) in your VS Code settings.

You can initialize an ESLint configuration file in your project with this command.

My current .eslintrc.js looks like the following.

Code Spell Checker

I don’t know about you, but it really bugs me when I discover I’ve misspelled function names, variables, comments, or anything else in my code. Misspelled code, as long as it’s consistently misspelled, works fine, but mistakes can still be frustrating or embarrassing.

Well, those days are over with Code Spell Checker! One nice thing is the extension understands camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, and more. Another great feature is there are dictionaries available for Spanish, French, German, Russian, and a number of other languages.

Auto Close Tag

More recent versions of VS Code automatically create closing tags when you are working in an HTML or XML file. For other file types, such as JavaScript, Vue, and JSX, Auto Close Tag will save you some typing!

DotENV

It’s quite common to configure Node.js applications using environment variables. And, one of the most popular modules for managing environment variables is dotenv. The DotENV extension for VS Code adds convenient syntax highlighting when editing a .env file.

Path Intellisense

The Path Intellisense extension adds autocomplete support for file paths and names, reducing typing as well as the introduction of bugs related to wrong paths.

MarkdownLint

Good code and good documentation go hand-in-hand. I prefer to write README’s and other documentation in markdown format. The Markdownlint extension can help you make sure your markdown syntax is in good form!

Material Icon Theme

The Material Icon Theme adds a ton of icons to VS Code for different file types. Being able to quickly distinguish different files in project can be a great time saver!

Honorable Mention VS Code Extensions for Node.js

These extensions didn’t make the top 10 list, but are still useful in some scenarios for Node.js developers!

  • Encode Decode - Adds commands to quickly convert text to and from various formats, such as Base64, HTML entities, and JSON byte arrays.
  • Rest Client - Make HTTP requests directly from your editor and view the responses in a separate window. Great for testing and prototyping APIs.
  • Better Comments - This extension helps you create more “human-friendly” comments by adding highlights to different types of comments.

Learn More about Building Secure Node.js Apps in Visual Studio Code

Want to learn more about building secure Node.js applications? Check out these other posts!

Additional links you may find useful!

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React is a popular JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building web application user interfaces. The Visual Studio Code editor supports React.js IntelliSense and code navigation out of the box.

Welcome to React

We'll be using the create-react-appgenerator for this tutorial. To use the generator as well as run the React application server, you'll need Node.js JavaScript runtime and npm (Node.js package manager) installed. npm is included with Node.js which you can download and install from Node.js downloads.

Tip: To test that you have Node.js and npm correctly installed on your machine, you can type node --version and npm --version in a terminal or command prompt.

You can now create a new React application by typing:

where my-app is the name of the folder for your application. This may take a few minutes to create the React application and install its dependencies.

Note: If you've previously installed create-react-app globally via npm install -g create-react-app, we recommend you uninstall the package using npm uninstall -g create-react-app to ensure that npx always uses the latest version.

Let's quickly run our React application by navigating to the new folder and typing npm start to start the web server and open the application in a browser:

You should see the React logo and a link to 'Learn React' on http://localhost:3000 in your browser. We'll leave the web server running while we look at the application with VS Code.

Visual Studio Code Node Js

To open your React application in VS Code, open another terminal or command prompt window, navigate to the my-app folder and type code .:

Markdown preview

In the File Explorer, one file you'll see is the application README.md Markdown file. This has lots of great information about the application and React in general. A nice way to review the README is by using the VS Code Markdown Preview. You can open the preview in either the current editor group (Markdown: Open Preview⇧⌘V (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+V)) or in a new editor group to the side (Markdown: Open Preview to the Side⌘K V (Windows, Linux Ctrl+K V)). You'll get nice formatting, hyperlink navigation to headers, and syntax highlighting in code blocks.

Syntax highlighting and bracket matching

Now expand the src folder and select the index.js file. You'll notice that VS Code has syntax highlighting for the various source code elements and, if you put the cursor on a parenthesis, the matching bracket is also selected.

IntelliSense

As you start typing in index.js, you'll see smart suggestions or completions.

After you select a suggestion and type ., you see the types and methods on the object through IntelliSense.

VS Code uses the TypeScript language service for its JavaScript code intelligence and it has a feature called Automatic Type Acquisition (ATA). ATA pulls down the npm Type Declaration files (*.d.ts) for the npm modules referenced in the package.json.

Visual Studio Code Node Js Set Environment Variables

If you select a method, you'll also get parameter help:

Go to Definition, Peek definition

Through the TypeScript language service, VS Code can also provide type definition information in the editor through Go to Definition (F12) or Peek Definition (⌥F12 (Windows Alt+F12, Linux Ctrl+Shift+F10)). Put the cursor over the App, right click and select Peek Definition. A Peek window will open showing the App definition from App.js.

Press Escape to close the Peek window.

Hello World!

Let's update the sample application to 'Hello World!'. Create a new H1 header with 'Hello, world!' and replace the <App /> tag in ReactDOM.render with element.

Once you save the index.js file, the running instance of the server will update the web page and you'll see 'Hello World!' when you refresh your browser.

Tip: VS Code supports Auto Save, which by default saves your files after a delay. Check the Auto Save option in the File menu to turn on Auto Save or directly configure the files.autoSave user setting.

Debugging React

To debug the client side React code, we'll need to install the Debugger for Chrome extension.

Note: This tutorial assumes you have the Chrome browser installed. There are also debugger extensions for the Edge and Firefox browsers.

Open the Extensions view (⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)) and type 'chrome' in the search box. You'll see several extensions which reference Chrome.

Press the Install button for Debugger for Chrome.

Set a breakpoint

To set a breakpoint in index.js, click on the gutter to the left of the line numbers. This will set a breakpoint which will be visible as a red circle.

Configure the Chrome debugger

We need to initially configure the debugger. To do so, go to the Run view (⇧⌘D (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+D)) and click create a launch.json file to customize Run and Debug. Choose Chrome from the Select Environment dropdown list. This will create a launch.json file in a new .vscode folder in your project which includes a configuration to launch the website.

We need to make one change for our example: change the port of the url from 8080 to 3000. Your launch.json should look like this:

Ensure that your development server is running (npm start). Then press F5 or the green arrow to launch the debugger and open a new browser instance. The source code where the breakpoint is set runs on startup before the debugger was attached, so we won't hit the breakpoint until we refresh the web page. Refresh the page and you should hit your breakpoint.

You can step through your source code (F10), inspect variables such as element, and see the call stack of the client side React application.

The Debugger for Chrome extension README has lots of information on other configurations, working with sourcemaps, and troubleshooting. You can review it directly within VS Code from the Extensions view by clicking on the extension item and opening the Details view.

Live editing and debugging

If you are using webpack together with your React app, you can have a more efficient workflow by taking advantage of webpack's HMR mechanism which enables you to have live editing and debugging directly from VS Code. You can learn more in this Live edit and debug your React apps directly from VS Code blog post and the webpack Hot Module Replacement documentation.

Linting

Linters analyze your source code and can warn you about potential problems before you run your application. The JavaScript language services included with VS Code has syntax error checking support by default, which you can see in action in the Problems panel (View > Problems⇧⌘M (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+M)).

Try making a small error in your React source code and you'll see a red squiggle and an error in the Problems panel.

Linters can provide more sophisticated analysis, enforcing coding conventions and detecting anti-patterns. A popular JavaScript linter is ESLint. ESLint, when combined with the ESLint VS Code extension, provides a great in-product linting experience.

First, install the ESLint command-line tool:

Then install the ESLint extension by going to the Extensions view and typing 'eslint'.

Once the ESLint extension is installed and VS Code reloaded, you'll want to create an ESLint configuration file, .eslintrc.js. You can create one using the extension's ESLint: Create ESLint configuration command from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)).

The command will prompt you to answer a series of questions in the Terminal panel. Take the defaults, and it will create a .eslintrc.js file in your project root that looks something like this:

ESLint will now analyze open files and shows a warning in index.js about 'App' being defined but never used.

You can modify the ESLint rules in the .eslintrc.js file.

Let's add an error rule for extra semi-colons:

Now when you mistakenly have multiple semicolons on a line, you'll see an error (red squiggle) in the editor and error entry in the Problems panel.

Popular Starter Kits

In this tutorial, we used the create-react-app generator to create a simple React application. There are lots of great samples and starter kits available to help build your first React application.

VS Code React Sample

This is a sample React application used for a demo at the 2016 //Build conference. The sample creates a simple TODO application and includes the source code for a Node.js Express server. It also shows how to use the Babel ES6 transpiler and then use webpack to bundle the site assets.

TypeScript React

If you're curious about TypeScript and React, you can also create a TypeScript version of the create-react-app application by specifying that you want to use the TypeScript template:

See the details at Adding TypeScript on the Create React App site.

Angular

Angular is another popular web framework. If you'd like to see an example of Angular working with VS Code, check out the Chrome Debugging with Angular CLI recipe. It will walk you through creating an Angular application and configuring the launch.json file for the Debugger for Chrome extension.

Common questions

Visual Studio Node Version

Can I get IntelliSense within declarative JSX?

Configure Vs Code For Node Js

Yes. For example, if you open the create-react-app project's App.js file, you can see IntelliSense within the React JSX in the render() method.