React Native using Expo and Typescript

This repository is a React Native demo app using the Expo framework and written in TypeScript. It used to also contain a type definition file for Expo, but that work has been merged into the @types/expo package.

The app is published on Expo: Expo and TypeScript on Expo. It is not published to the app stores, but you can run it on a device, if install the free Expo client.

Prerequisites

Install expo-cli globally.

# Install expo-cli globally using Yarn.
yarn global add expo-cli

If you prefer to use npm the command is npm install --global expo-cli.

Warnings When Installing Packages

There are a surprising amout of of warnings when building and running the app, because of peer dependecies not being correct. My guess is that the Expo team has a tough time getting all the added React Native libraries to play well together, and this app seems to run fine, so I believe it's safe to ignore the warnings.

Running the App

Start the local server. This will give you a QR code that you can scan using the Expo Client app on your mobile divice.

yarn start

If you're on a Mac and have Xcode installed, you can run the app using the iOS Simulator with the following command. I am sure you can do something similar with Android.

yarn ios

Setting up Expo and React Native with TypeScript

Here is how you set up an Expo app to be able to code in TypeScript instead of JavaScript. Debugging of TypeScript files works, and hot realoading works. I am unsure as to how well hot module replacement works compared to an app coded in JavaScript, but there is definitely some caching going on, because subsequent reloads are faster than the initial load.

Add TypeScript

Add TypeScript and the helpers library, tslib, to the project. I prefer micro managing the version of the packages that I'm using so I add --exact, but this is optional. You can, of course, also use npm instead of yarn.

yarn add --dev --exact typescript react-native-typescript-transformer
yarn add --exact tslib

Configure TypeScript by putting a tsconfig.json file in the root of your project. You probably don't need all of these settings. TODO: Boil the configuration down to the required settings.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
    "importHelpers": true,
    "jsx": "react-native",
    "lib": [
      "es2017"
    ],
    "module": "es2015",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "noEmitHelpers": true,
    "noImplicitReturns": true,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "outDir": "build/dist",
    "sourceMap": true,
    "strict": true,
    "target": "es2017"
  },
  "exclude": [
    "build",
    "node_modules"
  ],
  "types": [
    "typePatches"
  ]
}

Add React Native TypeScript Transformer

Add the React Native TypeScript Transformer package.

yarn add --dev --exact react-native-typescript-transformer

Configure Expo to use the transformer for .ts and .tsx files by adding the following lines to app.json under expo/packagerOpts.

"sourceExts": [
  "ts",
  "tsx"
],
"transformer": "node_modules/react-native-typescript-transformer/index.js"

It has been necessary to append /index.js to the URL since version 19 of Expo. Don't know why.

Complete app.json in this project.

App Component in TypeScript

Create a src folder, move App.js to that folder, and rename the file to App.tsx. Since TypeScript has a syntax that is very similar to JavaScript it is probably not necessary to make any modifications to App.tsx to make it valid TypeScript.

Create a new App.js in the root of the project, and insert the following lines. Expo will still be looking for App.js in the root of the project, and these lines simply loads src/App.tsx.

import App from './src/App'

export default App

Add Type Definitions

Finally add the type definitions for React, React Native, Expo and the Expo icons.

yarn add --dev --exact @types/react @types/react-native @types/expo @types/expo__vector-icons

Similar Projects

• expo-ts-example, the basis for this project
• TypeScript-React-Native-Starter
• react-native-typescript-starter