No inputs were found in config file in TypeScript

The error “No inputs were found in config file” occurs when we try to build a project that does not contain any TypeScript files. To solve the error, add an empty file with a .ts extension in your project’s root directory and restart your IDE if necessary.

tsc# error TS18003: No inputs were found in config file.# Specified 'include' paths were '["**/*"]' and# 'exclude' paths were '["node_modules"]'.

Step 1: Make sure your project contains at least one .ts file

If your project does not contain any files with a .ts extension, you can create an empty file with a .ts extension to silence the error.

Create a file called placeholder.ts with the following contents:

export {};

If you have set the include array in your tsconfig.json file, make sure to create the file in the specified directory. For example:

{  "compilerOptions": {    // ... your options  },  "include": ["src/**/*"],  "exclude": ["node_modules"]}

In this case, the include array looks for files in the src directory, so you would have to create the placeholder.ts file in src.

If you haven’t set the include array, create the placeholder.ts file in your project’s root directory (next to tsconfig.json).

Step 2: Restart your IDE and TypeScript server

If you already have files in your project, restart your IDE and TypeScript server. Sometimes, VSCode can glitch and need a reboot. In that case, open a file with a .ts or .js extension and restart the editor for it to pick it up.

[Fixed]: RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration

Step 3: Check the exclude array in your tsconfig.json file

Another thing that can cause the error is if you add all the files in your TypeScript project to the exclude array by mistake.

For example:

{  "compilerOptions": {    // ... your options  },  "include": ["src/**/*"],  "exclude": ["node_modules"]}

Make sure to only exclude the files that you want to filter out. If you have an exclude pattern that matches all of the files in your project, that’s the cause of the error.

Step 4: Create a tsconfig.json file to silence the error

If you don’t use TypeScript in your project, but still get the error and a restart of your IDE doesn’t help things, you can create a tsconfig.json file in your project’s root directory to simply silence the error.

{  "compilerOptions": {    "allowJs": false,    "noEmit": true  },  "exclude": ["src/**/*", "your-other-src/**/*"],  "files": ["placeholder.ts"]}

And create a placeholder.ts file right next to the tsconfig.json file:

export {};

Restart your IDE and the error should be resolved.

The tsconfig.json file from the example above looks to exclude all of your source files from compilation and just needs a single file as an entry point (placeholder.js) in the example.

The whole point of this tsconfig.json file is to silence the error in projects that don’t use TypeScript. By setting the allowJs option to false and the noEmit option to true, the TypeScript compiler will not emit any output files.

The exclude array specifies a list of files and directories to ignore, and the files array specifies a list of files to include in the project. By specifying an empty files array and excluding all of your source files, the TypeScript compiler will not have any input files to work with and will not produce any output. This effectively silences the “No inputs were found in config file” error in projects that don’t use TypeScript.

Conclusion on “No inputs were found in config file in TypeScript”

The error “No inputs were found in config file” occurs when we try to build a project that does not contain any TypeScript files. To solve the error, follow these steps:

1. Make sure your project contains at least one file with a .ts extension. If it doesn’t, you can create an empty file with a .ts extension to silence the error.
2. Restart your IDE and TypeScript server.
3. Check the include and exclude arrays in your tsconfig.json file to make sure they are correctly set.
4. If you don’t use TypeScript in your project, you can create a tsconfig.json file in your project’s root directory with the files and exclude options to silence the error.

By following these steps, you should be able to resolve the “No inputs were found in config file” error in your TypeScript project.