TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. It offers classes, modules, and interfaces to help you build robust components. TypeScript is easy to learn for developers familiar with JavaScript. In this article, we will explore how to use TypeScript with AWS services to build serverless applications.
First, we need to set up TypeScript on our development machine. We will be using the Node.js package manager (npm) to install TypeScript.
npm install -g typescript
After TypeScript is installed, we can verify the installation by checking the TypeScript version.
tsc --version
Now that we have TypeScript installed, we can install the AWS SDK for JavaScript. The SDK will provide us with APIs to interact with AWS services from our TypeScript code. We can install the SDK using npm as well.
npm install aws-sdk
Let's write some TypeScript code to interact with AWS services. We will start by writing a simple program to list all the S3 buckets in our AWS account.
First, we need to import the AWS SDK in our TypeScript code.
import * as AWS from 'aws-sdk';
Next, we need to configure the AWS SDK with our AWS credentials. We can do this by setting the AWS.config.credentials
property. There are various ways to set the credentials, but for the sake of simplicity, we will set the accessKeyId
and secretAccessKey
properties directly.
AWS.config.credentials = new AWS.Credentials({
accessKeyId: '<Your Access Key>',
secretAccessKey: '<Your Secret Key>'
});
Now that we have imported the AWS SDK and configured our credentials, we can create an instance of the S3
service.
const s3 = new AWS.S3();
The S3
service provides an listBuckets
operation that we can use to list all the S3 buckets in our account. The listBuckets
operation returns a promise, so we can use the async/await
keywords to make our code easier to read.
async function listBuckets() {
const response = await s3.listBuckets().promise();
console.log(response.Buckets);
}
listBuckets();
We can compile the TypeScript code to JavaScript using the tsc
command.
tsc main.ts
This will generate a main.js
file in the same directory. We can run the generated JavaScript file using Node.js.
node main.js
AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. Lambda handles all the administration of the underlying compute resources, so you can focus on writing code that brings value to your customers.
AWS Lambda supports multiple languages, but Node.js is the most popular language for Lambda functions. In this section, we will see how to create a Lambda function using TypeScript.
We will start by creating a new directory for our Lambda function. We will call this directory lambda-ts
.
mkdir lambda-ts
cd lambda-ts
Next, we will initialize the directory as a Node.js project using npm.
npm init -y
Now, we need to install the TypeScript compiler and the AWS SDK as dependencies for our project.
npm install --save-dev typescript
npm install aws-sdk
We can now create a tsconfig.json
file in the lambda-ts
directory to configure the TypeScript compiler.
{
"compilerOptions": {
"target": "es6",
"module": "commonjs",
"outDir": "dist"
}
}
We will also create a src
directory in the lambda-ts
directory to store our TypeScript code.
mkdir src
We can now create a TypeScript file src/index.ts
in the src
directory. This file will contain our Lambda function code.
import * as AWS from 'aws-sdk';
export async function handler(event: any, context: any) {
console.log('Hello, world!');
}
We can compile the TypeScript code to JavaScript using the tsc
command.
tsc
This will generate a dist/index.js
file in the lambda-ts
directory. We can now zip the contents of the dist
directory and upload the zip file to AWS Lambda.
cd dist
zip -r ../function.zip .
We can now test our Lambda function using the AWS Lambda console.
AWS DynamoDB is a fast and scalable NoSQL database service. In this section, we will see how to use TypeScript with DynamoDB.
We will start by creating a new directory for our DynamoDB application. We will call this directory dynamodb-ts
.
mkdir dynamodb-ts
cd dynamodb-ts
Next, we will initialize the directory as a Node.js project using npm.
npm init -y
Now, we need to install the TypeScript compiler and the AWS SDK as dependencies for our project.
npm install --save-dev typescript
npm install aws-sdk
We can now create a tsconfig.json
file in the dynamodb-ts
directory to configure the TypeScript compiler.
{
"compilerOptions": {
"target": "es6",
"module": "commonjs",
"outDir": "dist"
}
}
We will also create a src
directory in the dynamodb-ts
directory to store our TypeScript code.
mkdir src
We can now create a TypeScript file src/index.ts
in the src
directory. This file will contain our DynamoDB code.
import * as AWS from 'aws-sdk';
AWS.config.update({ region: 'us-east-1' });
const dynamodb = new AWS.DynamoDB();
async function createTable() {
const params = {
TableName: 'Users',
KeySchema: [
{ AttributeName: 'email', KeyType: 'HASH' } //Partition key
],
AttributeDefinitions: [
{ AttributeName: 'email', AttributeType: 'S' }
],
ProvisionedThroughput: {
ReadCapacityUnits: 10,
WriteCapacityUnits: 10
}
};
try {
const data = await dynamodb.createTable(params).promise();
console.log(data);
} catch (error) {
console.error(error);
}
}
createTable();
We can compile the TypeScript code to JavaScript using the tsc
command.
tsc
This will generate a dist/index.js
file in the dynamodb-ts
directory. We can now run the generated JavaScript file using Node.js.
node dist/index.js
AWS S3 is a simple storage service that offers high availability and durability. In this section, we will see how to use TypeScript with S3.
We will start by creating a new directory for our S3 application. We will call this directory s3-ts
.
mkdir s3-ts
cd s3-ts
Next, we will initialize the directory as a Node.js project using npm.
npm init -y
Now, we need to install the TypeScript compiler and the AWS SDK as dependencies for our project.
npm install --save-dev typescript
npm install aws-sdk
We can now create a tsconfig.json
file in the s3-ts
directory to configure the TypeScript compiler.
{
"compilerOptions": {
"target": "es6",
"module": "commonjs",
"outDir": "dist"
}
}
We will also create a src
directory in the s3-ts
directory to store our TypeScript code.
mkdir src
We can now create a TypeScript file src/index.ts
in the src
directory. This file will contain our S3 code.
import * as AWS from 'aws-sdk';
AWS.config.update({ region: 'us-east-1' });
const s3 = new AWS.S3();
async function putObject() {
const params = {
Bucket: '<Your Bucket Name>',
Key: 'test.txt',
Body: 'Hello, world!'
};
try {
const data = await s3.putObject(params).promise();
console.log(data);
} catch (error) {
console.error(error);
}
}
putObject();
We can compile the TypeScript code to JavaScript using the tsc
command.
tsc
This will generate a dist/index.js
file in the s3-ts
directory. We can now run the generated JavaScript file using Node.js.
node dist/index.js