Notes on TypeScript: Inferring React PropTypes

Introduction

These notes should help in better understanding TypeScript and might be helpful when needing to lookup up how to leverage TypeScript in a specific situation. All examples are based on TypeScript 3.2.

PropTypes and Inference

More often than not we might be working on an existing React application, where a team has decided to introduce TypeScript. This would also mostly mean that if Components props have to be defined at some point, either defining all at once or gradually. In some cases there also might be existing prop-type definitions. Instead of removing the existing prop-type definitions, we might be able to build a bridge between these prop-types and TypeScript.

In this part of the "Notes on TypeScript" we will learn how we can leverage TypeScript to infer these component prop-types.

Before we begin, it's important to note that the PropTypes type package offers PropTypes.InferProps, which enables to infer the types for an existing prop-type definition like so:

const userPropTypes = {
  id: PropTypes.number.isRequired,
  name: PropTypes.string.isRequired,
  active: PropTypes.bool
};

types UserProps = PropTypes.InferProps<typeof userPropTypes>;

But let's take a step back for a minute. What does calling typeof on a PropType definition return?

type TypeOfUserProps = typeof userPropTypes;

/*
  type TypeOfUserProps = {
    id: PropTypes.Validator<number>;
    name: PropTypes.Validator<string>;
    active: PropTypes.Requireable<boolean>;
  }
*/

If we take a closer look at userPropTypes, we can see that id and name are required and that the active flag is optional. When inferring these prop-type definitions, we can see that the returned type definition wraps the defined types into either a Validator or Requireable, depending on the fact, that the type has been defined as required or not.

So internally PropTypes.InferProps differentiates between required and optional types and then creates an intersection between these two groups. We won't go too deep into the implementation details, but there is a need to find out if a prop-type is required or not. An internal IsOptional type checks if a type is null | undefined and then determines if the type is optional.

Next, let's build a small example, to verify if we can transform any prop-type definitions to actual TypeScript types. We have a User component with existing prop-type and default props definitions.

const userPropTypes = {
  id: PropTypes.number.isRequired,
  name: PropTypes.string.isRequired,
  active: PropTypes.bool
};

const userDefaultProps = {
  name: "Test"
};

const User = (props /*: PropTypes? */) => {
  return (
    <div>
      id: {props.id}
      name: {props.name}
      status: {props.active ? "active" : "inactive"}
    </div>
  );
};

User.defaultProps = userDefaultProps;

How can we infer these userPropTypes and provide the missing types for the User component?

Our first approach would be to go back to the very first example in this write-up:

const userPropTypes = {
  id: PropTypes.number.isRequired,
  name: PropTypes.string.isRequired,
  active: PropTypes.bool
};

types UserProps = PropTypes.InferProps<typeof userPropTypes>;

If we verify the example, we can see that this is already working as expected.

const User = (props: UserProps) => {
  // ...
}

<User id={1} /> // Works!
<User id="1!" /> // Error! Type 'string' is not assignable to type 'number'
<User /> // Error! Property 'id' is missing

But we're not considering any default props, although this should not be the case, they might have a different type. This means we need to extend the existing mechanism to include the inference of default props.
There is not very much we need to do:

type InferPropTypes<
  PropTypes,
  DefaultProps = {},
  Props = PropTypes.InferProps<PropTypes>
> = {
  [Key in keyof Props]: Key extends keyof DefaultProps
    ? Props[Key] | DefaultProps[Key]
    : Props[Key]
};

If we take a closer look at the above InferPropTypes type, we can notice that we accept the prop-type and default prop types and then infer the provided prop-types. Next, we map over these inferred prop types and check if a key is also defined in the default props. The key extends keyof DefaultProps part helps us to find out if a key actually exists in the default props. If this is the case we return a union of the prop and default prop value type else we only return the prop value type.

Finally we can use our newly defined InferPropTypes as shown in the next example.

type UserProps = InferPropTypes<typeof userPropTypes, typeof userDefaultProps>;

Running our User component again, shows that everything works as expected.

const User = (props: UserProps) => {
  // ...
}

<User id={1} /> // Works!
<User id="1!" /> // Error! Type 'string' is not assignable to type 'number'
<User /> // Error! Property 'id' is missing

We should have a basic understanding of how we can infer existing prop-type definition in a React application when working with TypeScript.

If you have any questions or feedback please leave a comment here or connect via Twitter: A. Sharif

Comments

[Sergei]

Thanks for the article. I've tried this solution, but stuck with an error:

Type 'string | null | undefined' is not assignable to type 'string | undefined'

<div className={className}
                  ~~~~~~~~~

  node_modules/@types/react/index.d.ts:1645:9
    1645         className?: string;

I'm using React class component declaration and @types/react

const defaultProps = {
    className: 'user'
};
const propTypes = {
    className: PropTypes.string,
};

class User extends React.Component<UserProps> {
    static defaultProps = defaultProps;
    static propTypes: {};

    render() {
        let {className} = this.props;
        return (
            <div className={className}>test</div>
        );
    }
}
User.propTypes = propTypes;

Without declaring className on propTypes it fails with an error Property 'className' does not exist on type'Readonly<InferPropTypes<{...`

What could be the reason for this?

[A. Sharif]

Thanks for the question. Could you build a codesandbox example, so we can see the complete example and then try to fix it from there?

[Sergei]

Sure, here it is codesandbox.io/s/weathered-snowfla...
Looks like If disable strict mode in tsconfig.json it works fine.

[A. Sharif]

Excellent, thanks!
Will try it out and provide some feedback.

[Stefano Magni]

Thank you for your amazing article!! 👏
One question: how do you manage callback props? The solution above does not help with them because the proptypes does not allow to manage them effectively. For example, I could have this ComponentProps type in my component

export interface ComponentProps {
  handleCheckboxChange: (id: string, checked: boolean) => void;
}

how could I update the InferPropTypes type to be prompted by TS if I pass a callback with a wrong signature?
Thank you so much

[A. Sharif]

Thanks for the kind words!
I will have a closer look tomorrow and try to provide more insights if possible.

[Adham El Banhawy]

That's really interesting. I didn't know you can still use propTypes with TypeScript, I just always assumed that you gotta always write interfaces for props.

[A. Sharif]

If you add the defaultProps definition to the Text component, it should probably be enough for TypeScript to figure out that the property is optional.

Text.defaultProps = {
  size: 5
};

[A. Sharif]

This is interesting. Can you take a look at the simplified example:
codesandbox.io/s/fancy-bird-vqd9x

If you remove defaultProps TypeScript will complain.

[A. Sharif]

I think the problem in this specific case is tied to using forwardRef. Will try to find out in more detail , but I think forwardRef drops any default props.

[A. Sharif]

Yes, I think the problem is within forwardRef in this case. It drops the defaultProps.

[Derek Morrison]

I'm confused. In the first example, the (optional) active prop is of type PropTypes.Requireable<boolean>.

Doesn't that mean it's required? What does "requireable" mean?

[Derek Morrison]

Ohhhhh - nevermind. That Requireable interface has a method on it called isRequired. So, it's for things can possibly can be made required. 👍

[A. Sharif]

Excellent, thanks! Will have a look at this and try to figure out how we can solve this.

[Kit Randel]

Thanks for the excellent post. How do you manage typing spread props?

[A. Sharif]

Sorry, haven't been checking any comments for some time now. Will look into this and add more information.

[A. Sharif]

Thanks for the clarification!