DEV Community

Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Hasty Treat - TypeScripts Strict Explained

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about the Typescript strict flag — what it does and why you might use it.

Sanity - Sponsor

Sanity.io is a real-time headless CMS with a fully customizable Content Studio built in React. Get a Sanity powered site up and running in minutes at sanity.io/create. Get an awesome supercharged free developer plan on sanity.io/syntax.

LogRocket - Sponsor

LogRocket lets you replay what users do on your site, helping you reproduce bugs and fix issues faster. It’s an exception tracker, a session re-player and a performance monitor. Get 14 days free at logrocket.com/syntax.

Show Notes

02:50 - What is it?

  • Future versions of TypeScript may introduce additional stricter checking under this flag, so upgrades of TypeScript might result in new type errors in your program. When appropriate and possible, a corresponding flag will be added to disable that behavior.

03:26 - noImplicitAny

  • The any type in TypeScript is exactly that - it can be anything.
  • TypeScript will try to infer the type. When it can’t it will be any.
  • Sometimes you need any, but if that is the case, you must explicitly type it as any.
  • If something is implicitly any - it might be a mistake, or you forgot to type it. Risky!

06:01 - noImplicitThis

  • You must type this - it can’t be implicitly inferred.

06:47 - strictFunctionTypes

  • If you have a type that is a function and it doesn’t 100%.

07:44 - alwaysStrict

  • Always turns on strict mode. You can’t do things like redeclare var variables.

09:25 - strictNullChecks

  • Makes you check that the item is actually there before accessing a value or method from it.
  • Imagine you filter or find on an array, or query selector a DOM element. There is a possibility that nothing is there. strictNullChecks makes you check that it’s there - like an if statement.
  • Optional chaining is super handy here.

11:18 - strictBindCallApply

12:38 - strictPropertyInitialization

13:37 - useUnknownInCatchVariables

Links Tweet us your tasty treats!

Episode source