Manipulating types

In TypeScript, you can manipulate types in several ways. You can create new types from existing ones, combine types, and even create types that depend on other types.

Type keyword, type aliases

You can create a new type using the type keyword. This is called a type alias. You can use type aliases to give a name to a type, which can be useful when you need to use the same type in multiple places. Think of it like a variable declaration for types.

type Age = number;
let age: Age = 30;

type Person = { name: string; age: Age };
let person: Person = { name: "Alice", age: 30 };

Union & Intersection types

You can combine types using the | and & operators. The | operator creates a union type, which means that a variable can hold a value of either type. The & operator creates an intersection type, which means that a variable must hold a value that satisfies both types.

// Union type
type streetNumber = string | number;
let street: streetNumber = "926B";

// Union type with literals
type Direction = "left" | "right" | "up" | "down" | number;
let up: Direction = "up";
let diagonal: Direction = 45;

// Intersection type
type Named = { name: string };
type Aged = { age: number };
type Person = Named & Aged & { alive: true }; // = { name: string, age: number, alive: true }
let alice: Person = { name: "Alice", age: 30, alive: true };

Smart type narrowing

TypeScript has a powerful type inference system that can narrow the type of a value based on the conditions it goes through. This is called type narrowing.

For example, TypeScript can infer the type of a value based on the type of a property:

type Person = { name?: string; age: number };
let data: Person | undefined = persons.find((p) => p.name === "Alice");
if (data !== undefined) {
  // data has been narrowed down to the type Person
  if(data.name !== undefined) {
    // data.name has been narrowed down to the type string
    console.log(data.name.toUpperCase());
  }
}

Type assertions

Sometimes, you know more about the type of a value than TypeScript does. It can happen when the value comes from an external source, like a user input or a third-party library, that you trust to send you a value of the proper type. Or it can be a shortcoming of TypeScript's type inference, which is really good but not perfect.

In such cases, you can use a type assertion to tell TypeScript the type of a value, using the as keyword.

let data = JSON.parse('{"name": "Alice", "age": 30}') as Person;
let age = document.querySelector("input#age").value as number;

WARNING

This is forcing TypeScript to treat the value as the specified type, even if it's not. So this can be a source of bugs if you make a mistake. Use a type assertion only when there is no other way to tell TypeScript the type of a value.

Type predicates

Type assertions are a way to directly tell TypeScript the type of a value. But what if the type of value is deduced by a function run at runtime for example? You can use a type predicate for that.

A type predicate is a function that checks the type of a value and returns a boolean. If the function returns true, TypeScript will narrow the type of the value inside the block where the predicate is called.

type Person = { name: string; age: number };

function isPerson(value: { [key: string]: any }): value is Person {
  return typeof value.name === "string" && typeof value.age === "number";
}

let data = JSON.parse('{"name": "Alice", "age": 30}');
if (isPerson(data)) {
  // can call toUpperCase() because data has been narrowed down to type Person
  console.log(data.name.toUpperCase());
}

keyof keyword

You can use the keyof keyword to refer to the keys of an object type. This can be useful when you want to create a type that is a subset of the keys of another type.

type Person = { name: string; eyes: Color; mustache: boolean };
type PersonFeature = keyof Person; // = 'name' | 'eyes' | 'mustache'

typeof keyword

You may already know the JavaScript typeof operator which returns the type of a value:

typeof 42 === "number";
typeof "Alice" === "string";

In TypeScript, you can use the typeof keyword in the context of a type annotation to refer to the type of a variable or a property.

let age = 30;
let ageType: typeof age; // = number

By itself it is not very useful, but it can be used in combination with other features to create powerful types:

let person = { name: "Alice", eyes: "blue", mustache: false } as const;

type PersonFeature = keyof typeof person; // = 'name' | 'eyes' | 'mustache'

Indexed access types

You can use the [] operator to create a type that represents the type of a property of another type.

type Person = { name: string; age: number };
type Age = Person["age"]; // = number
type PersonField = Person[keyof Person]; // = string | number ; same as Person["age" | "name"]

In the example above, we used literal types, but it works for any type:

const users: Person[] = [
  { name: "Alice", age: 30 },
  { name: "Bob", age: 25 },
];

type User = typeof users[number]; // = Person
type Length = typeof users["length"]; // = number

const userCollection: { size: number, [userId: string]: User } = {
  alice: { name: "Alice", age: 30 },
  bob: { name: "Bob", age: 25 },
};

type UserCollectionValue = userCollection[keyof typeof userCollection]; // = User | number

Conditional types

You can create a type that depends on another type using conditional types. A conditional type is a type that is defined using a ternary operator.

type Person = { name: string; job: string };
type Animal = { name: string; legs: number };

let alice: Person = { name: "Alice", job: "developer" };

type AlicePronoun = typeof alice extends Person ? "she" | "he" : "it";
type FelixPronoun = typeof felix extends Animal ? "it" : "he" | "she";

Note the use of the extends keyword. This is used to check if a type extends another type, i.e. if it would be valid if given this type as an annotation.

This can be combined with generics to create powerful types:

type Pronoun<T> = T extends Person ? "she" | "he" : "it";

More on that in the next chapter: Generics.

Checkpoint

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Exercise

Follow instructions in the following playground