Cannot consume axios typescript types using CommonJS

Summary

There’s a chance I’m doing something wrong here, but this seemed to be the best place to post.

I’m using the following typescript config to typecheck my NodeJS code in .js files without transforming it (and also to typecheck my browser code with .ts and transforms).

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "strict": true,
    "jsx": "preserve",
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "target": "ES2017",
    "module": "CommonJS",
    "allowJs": true,
    "checkJs": true,
    "noEmit": true,
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "paths": {
      "*": ["node_modules/*", "typings/*"]
    }
  }
}

Given the following code in app.js

const axios = require("axios");

const client = axios.create({
  timeout: 1000
});

I get this type error:

server/app.js:10:22 - error TS2339: Property 'create' does not exist on type 'typeof import(".../node_modules/axios/index")'.

10 const client = axios.create({
                        ~~~~~~

However with this code (which is wrong), I get no type errors

const axios = require("axios").default;

const client = axios.create({
  baseURL: config.stravaBaseURL,
  timeout: 1000
});

Context

• axios version: 0.18.0
• Environment: Node 10.13.0, Typescript 3.2.4

[glenjamin]

Based on https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/2719 the solution appears to be to modify the typescript definition using export = syntax so that typescript knows it’s really a commonjs module.

diff --git a/node_modules/axios/index.d.ts b/typings/axios/index.d.ts
index 403fd1a..a9848a9 100644
--- a/node_modules/axios/index.d.ts
+++ b/typings/axios/index.d.ts
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+declare namespace Axios {
+
 export interface AxiosTransformer {
   (data: any, headers?: any): any;
 }
@@ -126,6 +128,8 @@ export interface AxiosStatic extends AxiosInstance {
   spread<T, R>(callback: (...args: T[]) => R): (array: T[]) => R;
 }
 
-declare const Axios: AxiosStatic;
+}
+
+declare const Axios: Axios.AxiosStatic;
 
-export default Axios;
+export = Axios;

If this is desirable let me know and I’ll bundle it into a proper pull request.

[mohd-akram]

A workaround is to add the following to a declaration file, eg. declarations.d.ts:

declare module 'axios' {
  import axios from 'axios/index';
  export = axios;
}