Rollup

FAST works great with Rollup and TypeScript, using a standard setup. Let's take a look at how you can set up a FAST+Rollup+TypeScript project, starting from scratch.

Setting up the package

First, let's make a directory for our new project. From the terminal:

mkdir fast-rollup

Next, let's move into that directory, where we'll set up our project:

cd fast-rollup

From here, we'll initialize npm:

npm init

Follow the prompts from npm, answering each question in turn. You can always accept the defaults at first and then make changes later in the package.json file.

Next, we'll install the FAST packages, along with supporting libraries. To do that, run this command:

npm install @microsoft/fast-components @microsoft/fast-element tslib --save

We also need to install the Rollup build tooling:

npm install rollup typescript @rollup/plugin-typescript @rollup/plugin-node-resolve rollup-plugin-cleaner rollup-plugin-copy rollup-plugin-serve rollup-plugin-terser --save-dev

Adding configuration and source

Now that we've got our basic package and dependencies set up, let's create some source files and get things configured. Since we're going to be writing a bit of code, now is a great time to involve a code editor in the process. If you're looking for a great editor for TypeScript and front-end in general, we highly recommend VS Code.

Open the fast-rollup folder in your favorite editor. You should see your package.json along with a package-lock.json and a node_modules folder.

First, let's create a src folder where we'll put all our TypeScript code. In the src folder, add a main.ts file. You can leave the file empty for now. We'll come back to it in a bit.

Then, in the root of your project folder, add a tsconfig.json file to configure the TypeScript compiler. Here's an example starter config that you can put into that file:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "pretty": true,
    "target": "ES2015",
    "module": "ES2015",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "importHelpers": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "declaration": true,
    "declarationMap": true,
    "sourceMap": true,
    "noEmitOnError": true,
    "strict": true,
    "outDir": "dist/build",
    "rootDir": "src",
    "lib": [
      "dom",
      "esnext"
    ]
  },
  "include": [
    "src"
  ]
}

You can learn more about tsconfig.json options in the official TypeScript documentation.

note

Do not set useDefineForClassFields to true in your tsconfig.json if you are using decorators (e.g. ExperimentalDecorators). These two features conflict at present. This will be resolved in future versions of TypeScript and FAST.

Next, create a rollup.config.js file in the root of your project folder with the following source:

import transformTaggedTemplate from 'rollup-plugin-transform-tagged-template';
import typescript from '@rollup/plugin-typescript';
import resolve from '@rollup/plugin-node-resolve';
import cleaner from 'rollup-plugin-cleaner';
import copy from 'rollup-plugin-copy';
import serve from 'rollup-plugin-serve';
import { terser } from 'rollup-plugin-terser';

export default {
  input: 'src/main.ts',
  output: {
    file: 'dist/bundle.js',
    name: 'bundle',
    format: 'umd',
    sourcemap: true
  },
  plugins: [
    transformTaggedTemplate({
      tagsToProcess: ['html','css'],
      parserOptions: {
        sourceType: "module",
        plugins: [
            "typescript",
            [
                "decorators",
                { decoratorsBeforeExport: true }
            ]
        ]
      },
      transformer(data) {
          data = data.replace(/\s([{}()>~+=^$:!;])\s/gm, '$1');
          data = data.replace(/([",[]])\s+/gm, '$1');
          data = data.replace(/\s{2,}/gm, ' ');
          return data.trim();
      }
    }),
    typescript(),
    resolve(),
    cleaner({
      targets: [
      'dist'
      ]
    }),
    copy({
      targets: [
        { src: 'index.html', dest: 'dist' },
      ]
    }),
    serve({
      open: true,
      contentBase: 'dist'
    }),
    terser(),
  ]
};

Let's go over our config file:

• input specifies the entrypoint of our application.
• output defines the configuration for the JavaScript bundle that Rollup generates.
  • This is the script that gets loaded by our index.html file; in our case, it is bundle.js.
• plugins is where you can add additional functionality to Rollup.

Let's go over the plugins we're using:

• transformTaggedTemplate minifies content within tagged templates (e.g. html and css)
• typescript allows us to write our source files in TypeScript.
• resolve allows us to import modules installed from npm, like @microsoft/fast-components.
• cleaner will delete the dist folder before rebuilding.
  • This ensures dist remains up-to-date with our source code.
  • Without this plugin, Rollup would only add or overwrite files in the dist folder, but never delete them.
• copy will copy source files to our dist folder, ensuring everything we need for deploying our app is in one place.
• serve provides a development server that will open our application in the browser for us.
• terser will minify the generated es bundle.

Let's add some helpful commands to our package.json file. Find the scripts section of your package.json file and add the following lines:

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "rollup --config",
    "dev": "rollup --config --watch"
  }
}

• npm run build: running this command in the terminal will build our application into the dist folder, allowing us to run it locally or deploy it.

• npm run dev: running this command in the terminal does the same as build, except it will keep a process running that rebuilds our app whenever our source files change. Rollup will watch our entrypoint main.ts and any files that get imported from there.

To complete our setup, we need to add an index.html file to the root of our project. We'll start with some basic content as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>FAST Rollup</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <script src="bundle.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

There's nothing special about the HTML yet, other than the script tag in the body that references the bundle.js file that our Rollup build will produce.

Using the components

With all the basic pieces in place, let's run our app with npm run build.

Rollup should build your project and open your default browser with your index.html page. Right now, it should be blank, since we haven't added any code or interesting HTML. Let's change that.

First, open your src/main.ts file and add the following code:

import {
  provideFASTDesignSystem,
  fastCard,
  fastButton
} from '@microsoft/fast-components';

provideFASTDesignSystem()
  .register(
    fastCard(),
    fastButton()
  );

This code uses the FAST Design System to register the <fast-card> and <fast-button> components. To get some UI showing, we need to write some HTML that uses our components.

Replace the contents of the <body> in your index.html file with the following markup:

<body>
  <fast-card>
    <h2>Hello World!</h2>
    <fast-button appearance="accent">Click Me</fast-button>
  </fast-card>
  <style>
    :not(:defined) {
      visibility: hidden;
    }

    fast-card {
      padding: 16px;
      display: flex;
      flex-direction: column;
    }

    h2 {
      color: white;
      font-size: var(--type-ramp-plus-5-font-size);
      line-height: var(--type-ramp-plus-5-line-height);
    }

    fast-card > fast-button {
      align-self: flex-end;
    }
  </style>
  <script src="/bundle.js"></script>
</body>

After saving your index.html file, run npm run build again, and you should see a card with text and a button.

Congratulations! You're now set up to use FAST, Rollup, and TypeScript. You can import and use more components, build your own components, and when you are ready, build and deploy your website or app to production.