How to Run JavaScript in Visual Studio Code

In this post, we’ll show you how to run JavaScript in Visual Studio Code. We’ll also show you how to debug JavaScript in Visual Studio Code.

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Introduction

Great question! Visual Studio Code is a very popular code editor and it has a wide range of extensions that allow you to add various features and tools. One of these features is the ability to run JavaScript. In this article, we will show you how to run JavaScript in Visual Studio Code.

What is Visual Studio Code?

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages (such as C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, Go) and runtimes (such as .NET and Unity).

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a programming language that enables you to create dynamically updating content, control multimedia, animate images, and pretty much everything else. (Okay, so not everything, but it is amazing what you can accomplish with a few lines of JavaScript code.)

JavaScript is used in millions of Web pages to improve the design, validate forms, detect browsers, create cookies, and much more.

Setting Up Visual Studio Code

In this section, we’ll go over the basic steps of how to open and run JavaScript files in Visual Studio Code. We’ll also talk about some of the features of Visual Studio Code that can come in handy when working with JavaScript.

Download and install Visual Studio Code

Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is a free, cross-platform text editor that’s not only easy to use, but also included some great tools and features for JavaScript developers. In this article we’ll show you how to get up and running with Visual Studio Code.

First, you’ll need to download and install Visual Studio Code. You can do this by going to the official Visual Studio Code website and clicking the “Download” button.

Once you have downloaded and installed Visual Studio Code, launch the application.

Install the JavaScript Extension

In order to run JavaScript in Visual Studio Code, you will need to install the JavaScript extension. To do so, open up the Extensions pane by pressing Ctrl+Shift+X (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+X (macOS). Then, type javascript into the search bar and click on the install button for the extension with the name: vscode-javascript-debug. Once it is installed, you will see a little blue status bar at the bottom of your window that says “Debugger enabled”.

Running JavaScript in Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code offers a wide range of features for JavaScript development. In this article, we will show you how to run JavaScript in Visual Studio Code. We will also show you some tips and tricks for debugging JavaScript in Visual Studio Code.

Create a new JavaScript file

Open Visual Studio Code.

Click File > New File. Name the file hello.js and save it in your projectfolder.

In the hello.js file, type the following code:

console.log(‘Hello, world!’);
Click on the Run icon in the Activity Bar on the side of VS Code or press Ctrl+Shift+D (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+D (macOS). This will open a new Terminal window and run your code!

Open the JavaScript file in Visual Studio Code

Open the JavaScript file in Visual Studio Code
Open the JavaScript file in Visual Studio Code. You can do this byRight-clicking on the file in the Explorer pane and selecting “Open with” > “Visual Studio Code”.Open the file from within Visual Studio Code by selecting File > Open and browsing to the file.

In order for Visual Studio Code to understand JavaScript, you will need to install a language extension. Microsoft provides a recommended extension for JavaScript called TypeScript and ESLint. These extensions will add syntax highlighting, code completion, and other IntelliSense features to your JavaScript files in Visual Studio Code:

Install the TypeScript extension:
In Visual Studio Code, open the Extensions pane (Ctrl+Shift+X).
Search for “typescript”.
Click Install to install the TypeScript Extension.

Install the ESLint extension:
In Visual Studio Code, open the Extensions pane (Ctrl+Shift+X).
Search for “eslint”.
Click Install to install the ESLint Extension.

Once you have installed these extensions, you will be able to see syntax highlighting and IntelliSense features in your JavaScript files in Visual Studio Code:

Run the JavaScript file

To run a JavaScript file in Visual Studio Code, you can press Ctrl+Shift+B (Windows, Linux) or Cmd+Shift+B (macOS) on the keyboard. You can also find the Run Script command in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P).

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have seen how to run JavaScript code in Visual Studio Code by using the built-in Node.js runtime. We have also seen how to debug JavaScript code in Visual Studio Code.