Develop nodejs with visual studio 2010

Question

Is it possible to develop NodeJS applications with VS2010. I'm talking plain ol' Javascript, not Azure or any fancy stuff like that. I just want to use VS2010 as the Javascript editor as I'm from .NET background and I'm very comfortable with it.

If I can, then please tell me how to configure VS2010 to be able to code NodeJS applications.

Answer 1

I was using VS for Node development and it was just a very poor experience. That said, simply create an Empty Website project. Which is about as empty as a project can be in VS... personally, I wish VS had support for a "non-compiled" or "script" project, to hold misc files, or outside scripts that aren't the purview of VS. That aside you may want to try out the typescript plugins for VS, as they add a lot of useful intellisense support, for what it's worth.

That said, you may want to give another editor a chance, if you don't need integrated source control you might want to look at WebMatrix2 (free) from MS, there's a plugin that makes node-inspector debugging transparent. Personally, I've been using JetBrains WebStorm (not too pricey) and loving it.

Answer 2

Sorry, new users aren't allowed to post images.

I can read English,but I can't write in English .So ,just this...囧

http://i.stack.imgur.com/aFyWV.jpg

Answer 3

To get vsdoc.js intelisense going in vs 2008 you need a microsoft patch:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2008/11/07/hotfix-to-enable-vsdoc-js-intellisense-doc-files-is-now-available.aspx

Then follow Rohan's answer to get the rest going

Answer 4

A couple of days ago Microsoft released official tools for Node JS. These tools are huge improvement over the other hacky solutions I've tried to pull off with Visual Studio.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/21/microsoft-launches-node-js-tools-for-visual-studio

I've yet to find a VS 2010 version of these tools. Currently, it only supports VS 2012 and VS 2013.

Answer 5

If you just want to use Visual Studio as a text editor, you can do that to edit Node apps. Use File > Open Website to open the folder that your Node application is in.

You can then open any *.js file and edit it using Visual Studio's text editor.

If you want to try some experimental Intellisense support, check out node-vsdoc. You'll have to add the nd/node-vsdoc.js file to your project and then reference it like this:

/// <reference path="node-vsdoc.js" />

Here's an example: https://github.com/kinogam/node-vsdoc/blob/master/nd/vsdoc-test.js

Answer 6

There is also a uservoice request for this:

node.js template in visual studio to easy start working on node.js