problem

I've been building a lot of projects with p5js (the javascript port of the Processing creative coding library, see: prickly and vicidual) lately and wanted to start using Typescript so that I could get the benefits of static typing in my projects.

So I started gathering info and trying out what other people were doing for similar problems in the modern web dev ecosystem and this is what I came up with.

solution

The solution I found to be easiest to get up and running with and to be extensible with other P5 libraries (like p5.sound for instance) without additional modifications was by cloning ardelta's p5-typescript-starter repo.

This project runs with parceljs which bundles up the typescript files you have into javascript that you can then use anywhere.

Reasons I like it:

• it just works, run npm start
• easy to port to production anywhere - npm build then take the output artifacts and use them anywhere
• it uses a modern javascript bundler which means there's a bunch of support / documentation if you ever run into problems
• dev mode is fast and features hot reloading right out of the box

Overall, it's just an extremely practical way to get coding with p5js and Typescript.

If you have a different workflow / project setup, I'd love to hear about it! I'm always in the market for a better dev experience so lmk below or shoot me a message.