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Beyond Type Safety: making TypeScript smarter by Building a Runtime Picker

HichemTech on December 14, 2024

Disclaimer Hey, before we get started, let me clarify something: while I’ll be talking a lot about my package, ts-runtime-picker, this isn’t a pr...

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Ruud Walraven • Dec 15

You ingenuity is much appreciated, I like tinkering and making new things too! The frustrating thing for me though is that there's always someone who thought of my ideas earlier. That doesn't reduce the feat on your end, and there may be users that need a as lightweight as possible solution that need your library. But I do want to point iut Typia. It's capable of much more then just pruning, including checking the correct types of the allowed properties.

import typia from "typia";

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

const input = { name: "Anna", age: 24, extra: "remove me" };

const user = typia.misc.assertPrune<User>(input);

console.log(user); // { name: "Anna", age: 24 }

There are some other types of libraries that can also validate unit like Zod, but that isn't really based on TypeScript types.

HichemTech • Dec 15

Thanks for tips, I'll definitely check them

Mohammad Jawad (Kasir) Barati • Dec 16 • Edited

Hmm, to me these approaches sound a bit over engineering. I mean yeah we need to sanitize incoming data from our client but that is just about separation of concerns and each layer needs to play its role. When a method/function says I only accept int as input you should not be sending it a string. And if that string comes from user input, someone in the middle needs to sanitize and validate data.

IMO the idea of class-validator, class-trasformer + DTO layer is a very clean architecture for your software.

Do the validation once, not at each layer. Am I forgetting something 🧐?

@ruudt, @hichemtab-tech.

PeteC • Dec 14

I wrote a similar function that doesn't use compile-time manipulation of the source. The difference is that you do need to specify an array of field names to copy, but the list is type-checked against the interface that you're copying to.

I think your article is (or should be) more about the power of babble plugins than Typescript per se, since you're not achieving the result purely from using Typescript. It could also do with fewer emojis!

HichemTech • Dec 15

Thanks for the observation ^.^

ArtemM • Dec 15

I'm curious what happens with nested interfaces? What if my top level interface contains another interface? Does it pick props recursively? What if it is a circular nesting?

A cool idea though. I have so many things in my mind how typescript metadata could improve runtime.

HichemTech • Dec 15

Well that's a good idea, I didn't think of that, I'll fix it in next version thanks

Ahmed Atwa • Dec 15

Can you share the logic behind the package?

HichemTech • Dec 15

Yes ofcs you can check the repository here : ts-runtime-picker - ts-transformer

namhtpyn • Dec 15 • Edited

You should have mentioned vite some where in this post as this obviously will not work if your project is not using vite.

Ada • Dec 16

Now what happens if you create a decorator that takes an ordered list of interfaces/classes/types corresponding to the function/method arguments so that you don't have to change function bodies to perform this work?
I'm thinking AOP style validation/input filtering. Should reduce cognitive load on users of the library, and anyone coming in to the code later.
(Something like this would have reduced a massive amount of upcoming effort on my plate)

Huh Hmh • Dec 16

Much of the same and more propagated type safety can be insured through Typebox

Omri Lavi • Dec 16

Thanks for sharing! As other mentioned, there may be other tools that solve this problem. But I really like your approach and how you learned by solving a real problem 💪