1. Visual Studio Code Javascript Debugging
2. Visual Studio Code Javascript Autocomplete
3. Javascript Extension For Visual Studio Code

JavaScript has evolved over the years. Today, JavaScript can run not only in browsers but also in Server, Desktop Application & IoT devices.

To define our code as a JavaScript project, create jsconfig.json at the root of your JavaScript code as shown below. A JavaScript project is the source files of the project and should not include the derived or packaged files (such as a dist directory). In more complex projects, you may have more than one jsconfig.json file defined inside a workspace. You will want to do this so that the source code in one.

Visual Studio Code is a trendy code editor today. It is one of the best for JavaScript application development. Let’s see how to set up a simple JavaScript environment.

1. Visual Studio Code supports many features for JavaScript and Node.js development. The features that ship with the downloaded product are the core features: debugging, IntelliSense, code navigation, etc. In addition, to these core features, you can install a large number of quality extensions to add features to VS Code for JavaScript development.
2. Install Visual Studio Code (VS Code) on Windows 10Learn how to run a JavaScript program on Visual Studio Code. You need Node.js with VS Code.

Requirements:

1. Visual Studio Code
2. Node.js
3. NPM (it’s a package manager which comes with Node.js)

Let’s start with setup of JavaScript Environment.

Step 1: Install Node.js

Go to the node.js website by following the above link and click on the downloads section. Select the LTS version, which is a stable version of node.js.

According to your platform (Windows, Mac, or Linux) and bit (32 or 64), you can download node.js installer.

After download of the installer is completed, install Node.js on your computer.

Follow the next step to check whether it is installed correctly or not.

Step 2: Verify Installation of Node.js and NPM

Go to command prompt.

Type node -v command and press Enter. You should get a node.js version.

Next,

Type npm -v command and press Enter. You should get a NPM version.

It should look like below.

If you get the proper versions means Node.js and NPM are rightly installed.

Step 3: Install Visual Studio Code

Follow the above link to the Visual Studio Code website and download setup according to your platform.

After downloading, install the Visual Studio Code to your computer.

Open it as an administrator.

It will look like this.

Step 4: Create and Open Folder

Create a folder on your computer at C or D drive. Keep the folder name in a small case. For example, jsexample.

You can create a folder using the terminal inside Visual Studio Code. But to make things simpler, We are showing you the simplest way.

Inside Visual Studio Code, go to the Fileand Click on Open Folder.

Select the folder which you have created. After selecting, you will get a folder inside VS Code Explorer.

Now go to the terminal in the menu and click on New Terminal. It will open terminal with the path in which you have created the folder.

Step 5: Create index.html File

In the folder, create an index.html file. You can create it from explorer where you can find the option to add a new file or directly create inside the folder location (Make sure it appears inside VS Code Explorer).

Add below sample code in index.html file and Save.

Step 6: Project Initialization

It is essential to initialize the project. You need to use NPM Command, which will create required files inside the folder.

In the terminal window type below command and hit enter.

It will automatically create the package.json file inside the folder.

Step 7: Install Lite Server

The lite server we will be using to host the application locally.

Use the following command in the terminal to install the lite server in the project and hit enter.

It will create a node_modules folder and package-lock.json inside the project. node_modules will contain required dependency for lite-server.

If you see below error in the terminal after installation of lite-server, then use npm audit fix command. All vulnerabilities will get fixed.

Below, files and folder should be part of your project till now.

Step 8: Modify package.json File

To start lite-server, you need to make small changes in the package.json file. Modify script object and change it’s ‘start’ property value to lite-server.

: Don’t forget to save changes.

It should look like this.

Step 9: Start the Website with Light Server

Finally, we have come to the last step.

Go to the Terminal and type below command and hit Enter.

Visual Studio Code Javascript Debugging

Lite-Server will automatically start a locally hosted website in the browser. You should get the below result if everything above is correctly setup.

To stop lite-server, you need to press ctrl + c in the terminal. It will ask you the below question.

Terminate batch job (Y/N)?

Type Y and hit enter. It will stop the server.

Visual Studio Code Javascript Autocomplete

lite-server detects change in file automatically. Just make changes in any file (html, js or any) and save them without stopping the server. you can see the changes are reflected automatically to the website.

Javascript Extension For Visual Studio Code

That’s it. It is effortless to set up a primary JavaScript environment by following the above steps.