Improve developer experience if opening only front end in the IDE

Tip submitted by @kaidohallik

The following behaviour occurs at least in Visual Studio Code.

If generating a full stack app (not skipping server nor client) and front end developer wants to see as few files as possible and opens only folder src/main/webapp/app in the IDE then IDE doesn’t recognize imports starting with app. These imports are red and developer can’t see these imported classes content and can’t jump with one click into these imported classes. Path app is defined in the tsconfig.json file which is located in the root folder of the generated app and therefore this information is missing if opening some subfolder.

Possible solution 1

Add file src/main/webapp/app/tsconfig.json with the following content:

{
    "extends": "../../../../tsconfig.json"
}

And for tests add file src/test/javascript/spec/tsconfig.json with the same content:

{
    "extends": "../../../../tsconfig.json"
}

After that Visual Studio Code resolves path app if opening only folder src/main/webapp/app or src/test/javascript/spec.

Possible solution 2

• add node script remove-import-alias.js to app root folder which replaces import aliases with relative paths:

const fs = require('fs');

removeImportAlias = function(dir, level, additionalPath) {
  fs.readdirSync(dir).forEach(function(file) {
    if (fs.statSync(dir + file).isDirectory()) {
      removeImportAlias(dir + file + '/', level + 1, additionalPath);
    } else if (file.endsWith('.ts')) {
      fs.readFile(dir + file, 'utf8', function (err, content) {
        if (err) {
          console.log(err);
        } else {
          let path = '../'.repeat(level);
          if (additionalPath) {
            path += additionalPath;
          }
          if (!path) {
            path = './';
          }
          const newContent = content.replace(/import \{ (.*) \} from 'app\/(.*)';/g, `import { $1 } from '${path}$2';`);
          fs.writeFile(dir + file, newContent, 'utf8', function (err) {
            if (err) {
              console.log(err);
            }
          });
        }
      });
    }
  });
};

removeImportAlias(`./src/main/webapp/app/`, 0);
removeImportAlias(`./src/test/javascript/spec/`, 0, '../../../main/webapp/app/');

• add remove-import-alias.js to .eslintignore

• run added script: node remove-import-alias.js

• delete app/* from the file tsconfig.json from the section compilerOptions.paths