Typescript dynamically create interface

Question

I use simple-schema to define DB schemas in an object:

{
   name: \'string\',
   age: \'integer\',
   ...
}

Is it somehow possible to creat

Answer 1

You can do this, but it might be more trouble than it's worth unless you think you might be changing the schema. TypeScript doesn't have built-in ways of inferring types in a way that you want, so you have to coax and cajole it to do so:

---

First, define a way of mapping the literal names 'string' and 'integer' to the TypeScript types they represent (presumably string and number respectively):

type MapSchemaTypes = {
  string: string;
  integer: number;
  // others?
}

type MapSchema<T extends Record<string, keyof MapSchemaTypes>> = {
  -readonly [K in keyof T]: MapSchemaTypes[T[K]]
}

Now if you can take an appropriately typed schema object like the one you specified, and get the associated type from it:

const personSchema = {name: 'string', age: 'integer'}; 
type Person = MapSchema<typeof personSchema>; // ERROR

Oops, the problem is that personSchema is being inferred as {name: string; age: string} instead of the desired {name: 'string'; age: 'integer'}. You can fix that with a type annotation:

const personSchema: { name: 'string', age: 'integer' } = { name: 'string', age: 'integer' }; 
type Person = MapSchema<typeof personSchema>; // {name: string; age: number};

But now it feels like you're repeating yourself. Luckily there is a way to force it to infer the proper type:

function asSchema<T extends Record<string, keyof MapSchemaTypes>>(t: T): T {
  return t;
}
const personSchema = asSchema({ name: 'string', age: 'integer' }); // right type now
type Person = MapSchema<typeof personSchema>; // {name: string; age: number};

UPDATE 2020-06: in more recent TS versions you can use a const assertion to get the same result:

const personSchema = { name: 'string', age: 'integer' } as const;
type Person = MapSchema<typeof personSchema>;

That works!

---

See it in action on the Typescript Playground. Hope that helps; good luck!

Answer 2

I don't think you can declare dynamic interfaces. However, you can create a type for objects with known properties.

You can create an object that maps string literals to actual types, e.g. 'integer' => number, but that is not relevant to the question. I don't know what framework you're using but the following example works for a similar looking framework: Mongoose.

users.js

export const UserSchema = mongoose.Schema({
    name: String,
    value: Number
});

export const Users = mongoose.Model('users', UserSchema);

export type User = { [K in keyof typeof UserSchema]: any } ;

usage:

import { User, Users } from './user';

Users.find({}).exec((err: Error, res: User) => { ... })

The returned result should have the same keys as UserSchema, but all values are mapped to any as you would still have to map string literals to types.