Type Utilities - JavaScript Challenges

Introduction

Checking types is a common practice in JavaScript in everyday coding and technical interviews.

You can find all the code in this post in the repo Github.

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Primitive values

In JavaScript, all types except Object define immutable values represented directly at the lowest level of the language. We refer to values of these types as primitive values.

There are 7 primitive values:

1. Null
2. Undefined
3. Boolean
4. Number
5. BigInt
6. String
7. Symbol

All primitive types, except null, can be tested by the typeof operator. typeof null returns "object", so we have to use === null to test for null.

Therefore, we get our first type utility function.

// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)

function isBoolean(value) {
  return typeof value === 'boolean';
}

function isString(value) {
  return typeof value === 'string';
}

function isNumber(value) {
  return typeof value === 'number';
}

function isSymbol(value) {
  return typeof value === 'symbol';
}

function isBigInt(value) {
  return typeof value === 'bigint';
}

function isUndefined(value) {
  return typeof value === 'undefined';
}

function isNull(value) {
  return value === null;
}

// Usage example
console.log(isSymbol(Symbol('test'))); // => true
console.log(isNull(null)); // => true
console.log(isUndefined(undefined)); // => true
console.log(isNumber(1)); // => true
console.log(isString('')); // => true
console.log(isBoolean(true)); // => true
console.log(isBigInt(9007199254740991n)); // => true

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Objects

Everything that's not a primitive type is an object in JavaScript. This includes:

• Plain objects
• Arrays
• Functions
• Dates
• RegExps
• Other built-in object types

Here comes the second utility function for Arrays, Functions, Objects.

• For array, use Array.isArray() method
• For function, use typeof operator
• For object, use typeof operator but check if it is null first
• For POJO, check if the object's prototype is Object.prototype or null. Use Object.getPrototypeOf() to access the prototype.

// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)

function isArray(value) {
  return Array.isArray(value);
}

function isFunction(value) {
  return typeof value === 'function';
}

function isObject(value) {
  // for null and undefined
  if (value == null) {
    return false;
  }

  return typeof value === 'object';
}

function isPlainObject(value) {
  // for null and undefined
  if (value == null) {
    return false;
  }

  const prototype = Object.getPrototypeOf(value);
  return prototype === Object.prototype || prototype === null;
}

// Usage example
console.log(isArray(new Array())); // => true
console.log(isObject(Object(null))); // => true
console.log(isFunction(Object.prototype.toString)); // => true
console.log(isPlainObject(Object.create(null))); // => true

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Object.prototype.toString.call()

There are several methods to check types in JavaScript, including:

• typeof for all the primitive types except null.
• instanceof determines whether an object is an instance of a specific constructor or class. It does not work with primitive values.

Object.prototype.toString.call() is the most reliable method for type checking in JavaScript.

We can extract the types by:

// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)

function getType(value) {
  const type = typeof value;

  if (type !== 'object') {
    return type;
  }

  return Object.prototype.toString
    .call(value)
    .slice(8, -1)
    .toLowerCase();
}

// Usage example
console.log(getType(1)); // => number
console.log(getType('')); // => string
console.log(getType({})); // => object
console.log(getType(null)); // => null
console.log(getType(undefined)); // => undefined
console.log(getType(Symbol())); // => symbol
console.log(getType(BigInt(1234567890123456789012345))); // => bigint
console.log(getType(function () {})); // => function
console.log(getType(new Date())); // => date
console.log(getType(new Map())); // => map
console.log(getType(new Set())); // => set 
console.log(getType(new RegExp("cat", "i"))); // => regex

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Reference

• JavaScript data types and data structures - MDN
• Data types - JavaScript.info
• Reference Type - JavaScript.info
• GreatFrontEnd
• 20. Detect data type in JavaScript - BFE.dev