Discord.js, TypeScript, TypeORM, Docker, MySQL project setup

.md

Initialise Node

npm init in the folder to setup in.

• Add type to package.json and set it to commonjs. We will be compiling TypeScript to CommonJS for execution, so when node executes the compiled files it should do it as CJS.

Install Packages

discord.js: npm i discord.js @discordjs/rest discord-api-types @discordjs/builders

• discord.js is the main package for connecting to Discord with node.js
• @discordjs/rest to authorise a connection to the Discord API
• discord-api-types for building routes to talk to the Discord API, namely registering application commands.
• @discordjs/builders for helper functions in building Slash commands.

TypeScript: npm i -D typescript @types/node ts-node-dev

• typescript is TypeScript.
• @types/node is typescript definitions for the NodeJS API.
• ts-node-dev allows for incremental compilation of TypeScript code, for faster development.

TypeORM and MySQL: npm i typeorm reflect-metadata mysql2

• typeorm is TypeORM.
• reflect-metadata for access to Decorators.
• mysql2 is the database driver we use for communicating with the database.

Also,

• dotenv for the use of a .env file to store secrets/instance specific setup. The Docker configuration will share this file.

.gitignore

Add a .gitignore file to the root of your project with the following contents:

node_modules/
dist/
.env

• node_modules/ for the installed packages - don't want these commited to the repo.
• dist/ is where TypeScript should compile to.
• .env will contain potentially sensitive information.

tsconfig.json

Add tsconfig.json in the root folder:

{
	"compilerOptions": {
		"target": "ES2022",
		"module": "CommonJS",
		"lib": [ "es6", "es5" ],
		"moduleResolution": "node",
 		"declaration": true,
		"outDir": "./dist",
		"esModuleInterop": true,
		"incremental": true,

		"strict": true,
		"allowJs": true,
		"forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,

		"experimentalDecorators": true,
		"emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
		"resolveJsonModule": true
	},
	"include": [ "src/**.ts" ]
}

experimentalDecorators and emitDecoratorMetadata as key as they allow us to use TypeORM's decorators! Everything else is up to your discretion - this is my personal tsconfig.

package.json scripts

"scripts": {
	"build": "tsc",
	"start": "node dist/index.js",
	"dev": "ts-node-dev --respawn -- src/index.ts"
},

src/index.ts (entry script)

We import dotenv and reflect-metadata as soon as we can (top of the file)

import 'dotenv/config';
import 'reflect-metadata';

discord.js connection

import { Client, Intents } from 'discord.js';

const client = new Client({ intents: [ Intents.FLAGS.GUILDS ] });

client.on('ready', () => {
	// Log guilds bot is in on startup
	console.log(`Logged in as ${client.user!.tag} and in the following Guilds: [${client.guilds.cache.size}]`);
	client.guilds.cache.forEach(g => {
		console.log(`[${g.id}] ${g.available ? g.name : "UNAVAILABLE"} `)
	});
});

client.login(process.env.TOKEN);