typescript - Angular2 - root relative imports

Question

I have a problem with imports in angular2/typescript. I'd like to use imports with some root like 'app/components/calendar', instead only way I am able to use is something like:

//app/views/order/order-view.ts
import {Calendar} from '../../components/calendar 

where Calendar is defined like:

//app/components/calendar.ts
export class Calendar {
}

and this obviously gets much worse the lower in hierarchy you go, deepest is '../../..' but it is still very bad and brittle. Is there any way how to use paths relative to project root?

I am working in Visual Studio, and relative imports seem to be the only thing that makes VS able to recognize these imports.y

Answer 1

As of TypeScript 2.0 you can set tsconfig.json properties baseUrl as following:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": "app"
}

Then, you might use your desired manner of importing components, like:

import { Calendar } from 'components/calendar';

Appendix

Fallback paths resolution

An important consideration is that specifying baseUrl option causes TypeScript compilator to:

1. Look up a path with regards to baseUrl
2. On failed resolution (module not found), look up a path with regards to moduleResolution option

SystemJS

Since SystemJS is heavily used in Angular development stage, be sure to accordingly config also systemjs.config.js, so that it resolves paths correctly.

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Source and further details: https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/5039