An old Typescript Syntax for Vim

---

NOTE: This Typescript syntax was created before Typescript's 1.0 release, more than a decade ago. I hope it has been helpful but there are now other options available. Vim has included Typescript syntax for some years, which receives more frequent updates at its own repository. Neovim can also use a treesitter grammar for highlighting.

---

Syntax file and other settings for TypeScript. The syntax file was originally from this 2012 blog post.

Checkout Tsuquyomi for omni-completion and other features for TypeScript editing.

Install

From Vim 8 onward, the plugin can be installed as simply as (Unix/Mac):

git clone https://github.com/leafgarland/typescript-vim.git ~/.vim/pack/typescript/start/typescript-vim

On Windows/Powershell, use the following:

git clone https://github.com/leafgarland/typescript-vim.git $home/vimfiles/pack/typescript/start/typescript-vim

For older versions of Vim, the simplest way to install is via a Vim add-in manager such as Plug, Vundle or Pathogen.

See the Installation Wiki

Pathogen

git clone https://github.com/leafgarland/typescript-vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/typescript-vim

If you want to install manually then you need to copy the files from this repository into your vim path, see the vim docs for :help runtimepath for more information. This might be as simple as copying the files and directories to ~/.vim/ but it depends on your Vim install and operating system.

Usage

Once the files are installed the syntax highlighting and other settings will be automatically enabled anytime you edit a .ts file.

Indenting

This plugin includes a custom indenter (based on pangloss/vim-javascript's indenter), it works pretty well but there are cases where it fails. If these bother you or want to use other indent settings you can disable it by setting a flag in your .vimrc:

let g:typescript_indent_disable = 1

If you want the indenter to automatically indent chained method calls as you type.

something
    .foo()
    .bar();

Then add something like setlocal indentkeys+=0. to your .vimrc, see :help 'indentkeys' in vim for more information.

If you use the = operator to re-indent code it will always indent chained method calls - this can be disabled by changing the regex the indent script uses to identify indented lines. In this case removing '.' from the regex means that it wont indent lines starting with '.'. Note, this is not ideal as the regex may change making your setting out of date.

let g:typescript_opfirst='\%([<>=,?^%|*/&]\|\([-:+]\)\1\@!\|!=\|in\%(stanceof\)\=\>\)'

Compiler settings

This plugin contains compiler settings to set makeprg and errorformat. The compiler settings enable you to call the tsc compiler directly from Vim and display any errors or warnings in Vim's QuickFix window.

To run the compiler, enter :make, this will run tsc against the last saved version of your currently edited file.

The default for makeprg is tsc $* %. You can enter other compiler options into your :make command line and they will be inserted in place of $*.

There are options to change the compiler name and to insert default options.

let g:typescript_compiler_binary = 'tsc'
let g:typescript_compiler_options = ''

These options will be passed to the binary as command arguments. For example, if g:typescript_compiler_binary = 'tsc' and g:typescript_compiler_options = '--lib es6', l:makeprg will be: tsc --lib es6 $* %.

You can completely override this plugin's compiler settings with something like this in your .vimrc, where you can set makeprg to whatever you want.

  autocmd FileType typescript :set makeprg=tsc

Note, this plugin's compiler settings are not used by Syntastic which has its own way of changing the options. See https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic#faqargs.

You can use something like this in your .vimrc to make the QuickFix window automatically appear if :make has any errors.

autocmd QuickFixCmdPost [^l]* nested cwindow
autocmd QuickFixCmdPost    l* nested lwindow

Syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting for TypeScript can be customized by following variables.

• g:typescript_ignore_typescriptdoc: When this variable is defined, doccomments will not be highlighted.
• g:typescript_ignore_browserwords: When this variable is set to 1, browser API names such as window or document will not be highlighted. (default to 0)