Adding a Nodejs app in turborepo

Everything else remains the same (Create a new project, add typescript, add express…)

The only thing that’s different is that tsc doesn’t perform great with turborepo

You can use either tsup or esbuild for building your backend application

Create apps/backend
Initialize empty ts repo

npm init -y
npx tsc --init

Use base tsconfig (Ref - https://github.com/vercel/turbo/blob/main/examples/kitchen-sink/apps/api/tsconfig.json )

{
  "extends": "@repo/typescript-config/base.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "lib": ["ES2015"],
    "module": "CommonJS",
    "outDir": "./dist",
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules"],
  "include": ["."]
}

Add dependencies

npm i express @types/express

Add src/index.ts

import express from "express";
 
const app = express()
 
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
    res.json({
        message: "hello world"
    });
})

Update turbo.json

{
  "extends": ["//"],
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    }
  }
}

Install esbuild

npm install esbuild

Add build script to package.json

"build": "esbuild src/index.ts --platform=node --bundle --outdir=dist"