primitive-predicates

A simple TypeScript library providing type guards for the primitive types in JavaScript.

What is it?

TypeScript will use certain clues to narrow the typing information down as much as it can before runtime. To help the compiler do this, TypeScript provides two features that this library uses to provide convenience functions:

1. Type predicate functions
2. Type assertion functions

How to install

To install, just run:

npm install primitive-predicates

Available functions

• assertIsString
• isString
• assertIsObject
• isObject
• assertIsArray
• isArray

How to import

Everything is available from the top level. Here's an example of how to import the functions:

import { assertIsObject } from "primitive-predicates";

Catching Assertion Errors

Each type assertion function throw their own type of error. Each of those errors, however, extends AssertionError (defined and provided by this library), which itself extends TypeError. This should make it convenient for catching thrown errors as desired while also allowing them to be easily distinguished from other types of errors.

To import the error classes to compare against during a try/catch, simply import them from the package like so:

import { StringAssertionError } from "primitive-predicates";

These are the available error types, grouped according to their inheritance:

• AssertionError
  • StringAssertionError
  • ObjectAssertionError
    • ArrayAssertionError

Predicates

Type predicate functions take in an argument, and return a boolean that is true if the passed argument was the expected type, or false if it isn't.

For example:

import { isString } from "primitive-predicates";

function doSomething(myArg: string): number;
function doSomething(myArg: number): string;
function doSomething(myArg: any): number | string {
  if (isString(myArg)) {
    return 42;
  }
  return "you gave me a number";
}

const aNumber = doSomething("definitely a string"); // The compiler will know 'aNumber' is a number.
const aString = doSomething(3); // The compiler will know 'aString' is a string.

Assertions

Type assertion functions work much the same way as predicates, except they throw an error if the argument passed isn't of the expected type. This is particularly useful when you're pretty sure something is a given type but you don't wanna have to mess around with flow control. Simply plop an assertion down and everything after it assumes the value is that type.

For example:

import { assertIsString } from "primitive-predicates";

function printUppercase(myArg: any) {
  assertIsString(myArg);
  console.log(myArg.toUppercase()); // compiler doesn't complain
}

object and null

The typeof operator, as its name suggests, returns the name of the type of the value provided as a string. For example, typeof "hello" would return "string". But there's a long existing "bug" in JavaScript that results in typeof null returning "object". This manifests in TypeScript in many ways that can prove to be frustrating.

TypeScript tries to help out by preventing us from passing null where things are explicitely typed as object, but things can get messy and confusing. In order to properly check that something is actually an object (and not null) we have to do the following:

const someVar: any = {};
if (someVar !== null && typeof someVar === "object") {
  // 'someVar' is still recognized as type 'any'
  someVar.thing(); // Compiler doesn't complain
}

The problem is that even after that check, the compiler will still see it as type any. This can be a real problem when trying to be very strict with the typing, since the compiler won't be making sure you can only reference properties it knows are there.

Luckily, this package provides that with convenience functions:

const someVar: any = {};
if (isObject(someVar)) {
  // 'someVar' is now recognized as type 'object'
  someVar.thing(); // Compiler complains
}