Ts-type-guards NPM

ts-type-guards

Curried TypeScript type guards for primitive types and classes

Simplifies typechecking by providing type guards to check if something is of a certain type or of the same type as something else. Includes tailor-made type guards for the primitive types and a general one for "classy" types.

Installation

npm install ts-type-guards --save

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

import { is } from "ts-type-guards";

const header = document.querySelector("header");
console.log(header.textContent); // Error: Object is possibly 'null'.
if (is(HTMLElement)(header)) {
    console.log(header.textContent); // Compiles and runs safely.
}

Because is, only etc are curried, you can use them like so:

import { is } from "ts-type-guards";

const foos = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".foo"));
const fooImages = foos.filter(is(HTMLImageElement));
const srcs = fooImages.map(img => img.src); // Compiles and runs safely.

Equivalent:

import { only } from "ts-type-guards";

const foos = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".foo"));
const fooImages = only(HTMLImageElement)(foos);
const srcs = fooImages.map(img => img.src); // Compiles and runs safely.

Checking Against Another Value

Use isLike to check if something is of the same type as a reference value:

import { isLike } from "ts-type-guards";

// We want to make sure that this function always returns a T:
function getFromLocalStorage<T>(key: string, fallback: T): T {
    const saved: string | null = localStorage.getItem(key);
    if (isNull(saved)) {
        return fallback;
    }
    const parsed: any = JSON.parse(saved);
    return (
        isLike(fallback)(parsed)
        ? parsed // parsed is like fallback, so it is a T!
        : fallback // parsed has wrong type, so return fallback.
    );
}

getFromLocalStorage("volume", 50); // Guaranteed to be a number.

(Note that this function can still throw DOMException or SyntaxError, but that's not a typechecking problem.)

Subclasses

is is basically a partially applicable instanceof. For classy types, isLike(ref)(x) is equivalent to x instanceof ref.constructor.

class Animal {}
class Lion extends Animal {}
class Warthog extends Animal {}

const someone = new Animal();
const simba = new Lion();
const nala = new Lion();
const pumbaa = new Warthog();

is(Animal)(simba);  // true
is(Lion)(simba);    // true
is(Warthog)(simba); // false
is(Lion)(someone);  // false

isLike(someone)(simba); // true
isLike(nala)(simba);    // true
isLike(pumbaa)(simba);  // false
isLike(nala)(someone);  // false

Primitive Types

is can only handle classy types, so the primitive ones have their own type guards:

isUndefined(undefined); // true
isNumber("5"); // false

isLike supports the primitive types as well:

isLike(5)(1.0); // true (because all numbers are floating point in JS)
isLike(null)(undefined); // false

The non-primitive types Boolean, Number and String share some, but not all, semantics with the primitive types boolean, number and string, respectively. The main difference lies in their equality semantics:

           "foo"  ===            "foo" ; // true
new String("foo") === new String("foo"); // false

ts-type-guards includes type guards for the cases when you don't care whether a value is of a primitive type or its pseudo-primitive counterpart. For example, to check if a value is either a string or a String, use isStringLike.

Reusing Type Guards

Although it may seem clunky to have to write is(x)(y) instead of is(x, y), this is a design choice based on the fact that partial application is so awesome. Not only does it get rid of xs.filter(x => is(T, x)) in favor of xs.filter(is(T)), it also lets you save and reuse type guards:

const isFoo = is(LongModuleName.Foo);

if (isFoo(x)) {
    x.baz();
}

xs.filter(isFoo).forEach(x => x.baz());

Arrays

You can check if something is an array of a certain type:

isArrayOfNumbers([1, 2, 3]); // true
isArrayOfNumbers([1, 2, "3"]); // false
isArrayOf(Error)([
    new RangeError(),
    new TypeError(),
]); // true