Gain insights into integrating TypeScript with React to improve productivity. Learn about strongly-typed props, state, and events, and set up projects using Create React App, Webpack, and Babel.

If you are a React developer and want to build your React apps faster and more robustly, this course is for you. Learn to integrate TypeScript with React, boost your productivity, and create apps that are easier to maintain.

In this course, you will learn how to utilize TypeScript’s sophisticated type system to make React development faster and your code more readable. You will learn how to create component props, state, and events that are strongly-typed, allowing you to quickly understand what you can pass and helping you avoid mistakes.

Lastly, you will set up React projects with TypeScript. First, you will learn how to do this with the Create React App tool, then how to create a React and TypeScript project with Webpack and Babel.

Using TypeScript with React

# Installing Babel

As mentioned in the last lesson, our project is going to use [**Babel**](https://babeljs.io/) to convert our React and TypeScript code to JavaScript. Let's install Babel with the necessary plugins as a development dependency:  

```shell
npm install --save-dev @babel/core @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react @babel/preset-typescript @babel/plugin-transform-runtime @babel/runtime
```

Here's an explanation of the packages we have just installed:

* `@babel/core`: As the name suggests, this is the core Babel library.
* `@babel/preset-env`: This is a collection of plugins that allow us to use the latest JavaScript features but still target browsers that don't support them.
* `@babel/preset-react`: This is a collection of plugins that enable Babel to transform React code into JavaScript.
* `@babel/preset-typescript`: This is a plugin that enables Babel to transform TypeScript code into JavaScript.
* `@babel/plugin-transform-runtime` and `@babel/runtime`: These are plugins that allow us to use the `async` and `await` JavaScript features.

# Configuring Babel

Babel is configured in a file called `.babelrc`. Let's create this file in the root of our project with the following content:

```json
{
  "presets": [
    "@babel/preset-env",
    "@babel/preset-react",
    "@babel/preset-typescript"
  ],
  "plugins": [
    [
      "@babel/plugin-transform-runtime",
      {
        "regenerator": true
      }
    ]
  ]
}
```

This configuration tells Babel to use the plugins we have installed.

We will continue to create our project in this lesson by adding a dependency that will transpile both the React and TypeScript code to JavaScript.

Why TypeScript?

Using basic types

Creating types

Working with generic types

Creating strongly-typed function component props

Creating strongly-typed function component state

Creating strongly-typed class components

Creating strongly-typed component events and event handlers

Creating strongly-typed context

Creating strongly-typed refs

Creating React projects with TypeScript using Create React App

Creating a React and TypeScript project manually

Putting everything together

Adding Babel

Installing Babel