Arafat

Posted on Apr 2, 2023 • Updated on May 2, 2023

Typescript utility types that you must know

#typescript #webdev #beginners #tutorial

Hello everyone, Today, In this article, we will go through some beneficial and essential utility types in Typescript that can make your life easier.

Utility types in Typescript are some predefined generic types that can be used to manipulate or create other new types. These types are available globally in all Typescript projects, so you don't need to add any dependencies to get these going.

Partial
Required
Omit
Pick
Multiple utility types together
Readonly
Mutable
Exclude
Extract
ReturnType
Parameters
NonNullable
Awaited
Awaited and ReturnType combined
Conclusion

Partial

The first utility type we will look at is Partial, which, as It sounds, makes everything optional or partial.

Here is an example of Partial utility type:

interface Person {
  name: string;
  age: number;
  email: string;
}

// Define a new type called 'PartialPerson' that is a partial version of 'Person'
type PartialPerson = Partial<Person>;

// Same as:
// interface Person {
//   name?: string | undefined;
//   age?: number | undefined;
//   email?: string | undefined;
// }

Required

The opposite to Partial is Required utility type, which makes everything required.

interface Person {
 name?: string | undefined;
 age?: number | undefined;
 email?: string | undefined;
}

// Define a new type called 'RequiredPerson' that is a required version of 'Person'
type RequiredPerson = Required<Person>;

// Same as:
// interface Person {
//   name: string;
//   age: number;
//   email: string;
// }

Omit

You can use the Omit utility type to create a new type from an existing type, however, with some properties removed.

interface User {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  age: number;
}

type UserWithoutEmail = Omit<User, 'email'>;

// same as: 
// interface User {
//   id: string;
//   name: string;
//   age: number;
// }

We can also remove multiple properties by passing an union

interface User {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  age: number;
}

type UserWithoutEmailAndName = Omit<User, 'email' | 'name'>;

// same as: 
// interface User {
//   id: string;
//   age: number;
// }

Pick

The opposite of Omit is the Pick utility type that allows you to create a new type that contains only a subset of properties from an existing type.

interface User {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  age: number;
}

type UserWithEmailAndName = Pick<User, 'email' | 'name'>;

// same as: 
// interface User {
//   name: string;
//   email: string;
// }

Multiple utility types together

We can even use multiple utility types together. For example:

interface User {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  age: number;
}

type PartialPick = Partial<Pick<User, 'email' | 'name'>>;

// same as: 
// interface User {
//   name?: string | undefined;
//   email?: string | undefined;
// }

Another exmaple:

interface User {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  age: number;
}

type OmitPartialPick = Omit<Partial<Pick<User, 'email' | 'name'>>, 'email'>;

// same as: 
// interface User {
//   name?: string | undefined;
// }

Readonly

Readonly utility types allow you to create a new type from an existing type set as readonly, which means we cannot modify any property after the initialization.

interface Person {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  age: number;
}

type ReadonlyPerson = Readonly<Person>;

// same as:
// interface Person {
//   readonly id: number;
//   readonly name: string;
//   readonly age: number;
// }

const person: ReadonlyPerson = {
  id: 1,
  name: 'John',
  age: 25
};

person.name = 'Mike'; // Error: Cannot assign to 'name' because it is a read-only property.

Mutable

You can also create a Mutable type helper that allows you to convert all readonly types to mutable type.

interface Person {
  readonly id: number;
  readonly name: string;
  readonly age: number;
}

// The syntax for Mutable is as follows:
type Mutable<T> = {
  -readonly [P in keyof T]: T[P];
};

type MutablePerson = Mutable<Person>;

// same as:
// interface Person {
//   id: number;
//   name: string;
//   age: number;
// }

const person: MutablePerson = {
  id: 1,
  name: 'John',
  age: 25
};

person.name = 'Mike'; // Okay
person.id = 2; // Okay

Exclude

Exclude utility type allows you to create a new type by removing members of an union

type NumberOrString = number | string;
type OnlyNumber = Exclude<NumberOrString, string>;

// same as:
// type OnlyNumber = number;

const num: OnlyNumber = 5;
const str: OnlyNumber = 'hello'; // Error: Type '"hello"' is not assignable to type 'number'.

You can even exlude mulitple members of an union:

type NumberStringOrBoolean = number | string | boolean;
type OnlyBoolean = Exclude<NumberStringOrBoolean, string | number>;

// same as:
// type OnlyBoolean = boolean;

Extract

The opposite to Exclude is Extract utitlity type that allows you to pick a or multiple members from an union:

type NumberOrString = number | string | boolean;
type OnlyNumber = Extract<NumberOrString, number>;

// same as:
// type OnlyNumber = number;

ReturnType

ReturnType utility type lets you to extract the return type of a function type. It takes a function type as an argument and returns the value type that the function returns.

function add(a: number, b: number): number {
  return a + b;
}

type AddReturnType = ReturnType<typeof add>;
// type AddReturnType = number;

// ---

function addStr(a: string, b: string): string{
  return a + b;
}

type AddReturnType2 = ReturnType<typeof addStr>;
// type AddReturnType2 = string;

Parameters

The Parameters utility type lets you extract the type of parameters from a function.

function add(a: number, b: string, c:boolean): string {
  return a + b;
}

type AddReturnType = Parameters<typeof add>;
// type AddReturnType = [a: number, b: string, c:boolean];

NonNullable

NonNullable utility type lets you to create a new type by excluding null and undefined from a given type.

type NullableString = string | null | undefined;

type NonNullableString = NonNullable<NullableString>;
// type NonNullableString = string;

const str1: NullableString = null;
const str2: NonNullableString = 'hello';
const str3: NonNullableString = null; // Error: Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'string'.

Awaited

Awaited utility type allows you to extract the resolved type of a promise or other type that uses await.

type promiseNumber = Promise<number>

type justNumber = Awaited<Promise<number>>
// type justNumber = number

Awaited and ReturnType combined

Here's an example of using ReturnType and Awaited together:

async function fetchData(): Promise<string> {
  // fetch data from API and return a string
}

type ResolvedResult = Awaited<ReturnType<typeof fetchData>>;
// type ResolvedResult = string

In this example, we define an async function that returns a Promise of a string (Promise<string>). We then use ReturnType to extract the return type of fetchData and pass it as an argument to Awaited to unwrap the promised's resolved type.

Conclusion

These are some of the most used typescript utility types that are heavily used by other developers worldwide. It cleans your code and can be used to work with types more expressively and concisely. I hope you will find this article helpful, and if you think I missed any essential utility types, please let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading the article. See you all in my next article🐼.

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Top comments (14)

Gautam Vaishnav • Apr 2 '23

You are a great developer surly

Arafat • Apr 2 '23

Thanks for your nice comment😊.

Héctor Ramírez • Apr 8 '23

Concise and to the point. I foresee a terrific developer in you...

s_yasunaga • Apr 12 '23

Great post!
May I translate this article into Japanese and post it to community? (I'll definitely link this)

Arafat • Apr 12 '23

Sure, Go ahead!!!

byby • Apr 3 '23

Hot take: don't use any TS utility types :v

Pelle Wessman • Apr 4 '23

Why? What would be the reason to avoid them?

byby • Apr 4 '23

Over using utility types may lead to code that is difficult to understand and maintain. Especially nesting many types together. I know this is a soft opinion, the point is I saw many projects with very complex type definitions. Here's an example:

type User = {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
};

type VeryComplexUser = Readonly<Pick<User, "id">> &
  Partial<Omit<User, "email">> &
  { email: User["email"] | null } &
  { role: string } &
  Record<"email", string> & {
    role: User["name"] extends "admin" ? "admin" : "user";
  } & {
    name: User["name"];
  } & {
    id: { [K in keyof User["id"]]: User["id"][K] };
  } & {
    email: User["email"] & string;
  } & {
    role: Exclude<User["role"], "guest">;
  };