Building Lambda functions with TypeScript - AWS Lambda
Development environment

Building Lambda functions with TypeScript

You can use the Node.js runtime to run TypeScript code in AWS Lambda. Because Node.js doesn't run TypeScript code natively, you must first transpile your TypeScript code into JavaScript. Then, use the JavaScript files to deploy your function code to Lambda. Your code runs in an environment that includes the AWS SDK for JavaScript, with credentials from an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role that you manage. To learn more about the SDK versions included with the Node.js runtimes, see Runtime-included SDK versions.

Lambda supports the following Node.js runtimes.

Node.js
Name Identifier Operating system Deprecation date Block function create Block function update

Node.js 20

nodejs20.x

Amazon Linux 2023

Node.js 18

nodejs18.x

Amazon Linux 2

Node.js 16

nodejs16.x

Amazon Linux 2

Jun 12, 2024

Feb 28, 2025

Mar 31, 2025
Topics

Setting up a TypeScript development environment

Use a local integrated development environment (IDE), text editor, or AWS Cloud9 to write your TypeScript function code. You can’t create TypeScript code on the Lambda console.

To transpile your TypeScript code, set up a compiler such as esbuild or Microsoft's TypeScript compiler (tsc) , which is bundled with the TypeScript distribution. You can use the AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) or the AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) to simplify building and deploying TypeScript code. Both tools use esbuild to transpile TypeScript code into JavaScript.

When using esbuild, consider the following:

  • There are several TypeScript caveats.

  • You must configure your TypeScript transpilation settings to match the Node.js runtime that you plan to use. For more information, see Target in the esbuild documentation. For an example of a tsconfig.json file that demonstrates how to target a specific Node.js version supported by Lambda, refer to the TypeScript GitHub repository.

  • esbuild doesn’t perform type checks. To check types, use the tsc compiler. Run tsc -noEmit or add a "noEmit" parameter to your tsconfig.json file, as shown in the following example. This configures tsc to not emit JavaScript files. After checking types, use esbuild to convert the TypeScript files into JavaScript.

Example tsconfig.json
 {
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es2020",
    "strict": true,
    "preserveConstEnums": true,
    "noEmit": true,
    "sourceMap": false,
    "module":"commonjs",
    "moduleResolution":"node",
    "esModuleInterop": true, 
    "skipLibCheck": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true, 
    "isolatedModules": true, 
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules", "**/*.test.ts"]
}