Use Typescript to help migrate/upgrade code

I am tasked with migrating a large javascript codebase from using the beta version of firebase-functions to the latest. Like most major upgrades, there are many API changes to deal with. Here's an example cloud function:

Beta version with node 6:

exports.dbCreate = functions.database.ref('/path').onCreate((event) => {
  const createdData = event.data.val(); // data that was created
});

Latest version with node 10:

exports.dbCreate = functions.database.ref('/path').onCreate((snap, context) => {
  const createdData = snap.val(); // data that was created
});

The parameters changed for onCreate.

In the real codebase there are hundreds of cloud functions like this and they all have varying API changes to be made. With no code-mod in sight, I'm on my own to figure out an effecient way to upgrade. Enter Typescript.

After upgrading the dependencies to the latest versions I added a tsconfig:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "module": "commonjs",
    "outDir": "lib",
    "target": "es2017",
    "allowJs": true,
    "checkJs": true,
  },
  "include": ["src"]
}

The key is to enable checkJs so that the Typescript compiler reports errors in javascript files.

And running tsc --noEmit against the codebase provided me with a list of 200+ compiler errors pointing me to every change required.