Can I write local plugins in TypeScript?

[borekb]

Right now, we have a custom local plugin in a simple .js file that we load like this in docusaurus.config.js:

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      "@docusaurus/preset-classic",
      {
        docs: {
          remarkPlugins: [require("./our-plugin")],
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Can our plugin file be written in TypeScript? Would we need to build it manually, e.g. via tsc, or does Docusaurus somehow accept TypeScript natively?

TypeScript is supported for theme components but I'm not sure about plugins.

[slorber]

Hmm I don't think we support config in TS for now, but maybe try and report :)

Maybe it would be complicated to achieve (require running Docusaurus with ts-node) or not convenient (require compiling the plugin to js first), not sure?

However you can probably get some autocompletion support with jsdoc annotations

/** @type {import('@docusaurus/types').Plugin} */
function MyPlugin() {
  return {
    name,
  };
}

Can be good enough for now?

Also we'll allow passing a function directly for the plugin so you could write more easily the plugin directly in the config file (if that make sense): #4618

[borekb]

Good hints, thanks. I didn't realize that the "problem" is in config itself – I thought that the config could stay in JS and just the plugin would be in TypeScript but that's probably nonsense – both would have to support TS.

[slorber]

yes,the config and plugins are read by nodejs, so we either have to make nodejs understand TS (ie ts-node, or Deno?) or compile that TS to JS before running

[borekb]

We write Next.js apps in TypeScript but are used to the fact that next.config.js is plain JavaScript, so this is probably a similar situation.

I don't know what the impacts of running docusaurus.config.js through ts-node would be – I think that in the --transpile-only mode, it is pretty lightweight but I didn't do any testing.

Plugins can get relatively complex so having full TS power would be awesome 😄 💪.

[slorber]

you can already write plugins in TS already, it's just that you'll have to compile them first (like we do for docusaurus plugins)