More often than not, the any type is used to denote some form of an object dictionary. For third-party libraries, this may be the configuration object and whatnot.
In those cases, I strongly advocate for the use of the Record<K, V> utility type. It's basically a wrapper over objects with index signatures, but it provides a greater level of type safety than a mere any type.
I can, for example, define a dictionary of string key-value pairs as Record<string, string>, which is definitely safer than any. For an extra level of protection, one can also use Record<string, string|undefined> instead in order to enforce null checks.
The any type should always be a last resort. Ideally, it shouldn't even be an option. In practice? Maybe not so.
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More often than not, the
anytype is used to denote some form of an object dictionary. For third-party libraries, this may be the configuration object and whatnot.In those cases, I strongly advocate for the use of the Record<K, V> utility type. It's basically a wrapper over objects with index signatures, but it provides a greater level of type safety than a mere
anytype.I can, for example, define a dictionary of string key-value pairs as
Record<string, string>, which is definitely safer thanany. For an extra level of protection, one can also useRecord<string, string|undefined>instead in order to enforce null checks.The
anytype should always be a last resort. Ideally, it shouldn't even be an option. In practice? Maybe not so.