Suggestion: Automatically infer argument types in overloaded function implementation

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infer, arguments, function, overload

Suggestion

For basic container types (Point, Size, Rect, ...) I often write constructors and methods with overloaded signatures so they can be called with the container type itself or with the separate components of the container as arguments. Example:

class Point {
    constructor(point: Point);
    constructor(x: number, y: number);
    constructor(arg1: Point | number, arg2?: number) {
        if (arg1 instanceof Point) {
            this.x = arg1.getX();
            this.y = arg1.getY();
        } else {
            this.x = arg1;
            this.y = arg2!;
        }
    }
}

And I always wonder why I have to specify the argument types in the implementation again when I already defined the possible types in the overload signatures.

In this simple Point type it is still pretty easy but imagine a Rect type which can work with four number arguments, two Point arguments, a Point and Size argument or a Rect argument. Manually writing the combined signature for all these overloaded signatures is cumbersome. And I don't want to use any here because I want type checking in the function body.

An alternative way to write this example is this:

class Point {
    constructor(point: Point);
    constructor(x: number, y: number);
    constructor(...args: [ Point ] | [ number, number ]) {
        const [ arg1, arg2 ] = args;
        // arg1 is now Point | number
        // arg2 is now number | undefined (At least since TS 3.2 because of #27543)
        ...
    }
}

This shows how easy it should be for TypeScript to collect the possible function signatures into a union type so writing constructor(...args) would be enough.

Taking this a step further I even like to write this so I don't need to destructure the arguments myself:

class Point {
    constructor(point: Point);
    constructor(x: number, y: number);
    constructor(arg1, arg2) {
        // arg1 is now Point | number
        // arg2 is now number | undefined
        ...
    }
}

Taking this ANOTHER step further TypeScript could even narrow down the inferred function signatures by each type check done within the function body:

class Point {
    constructor(point: Point);
    constructor(x: number, y: number);
    constructor(arg1, arg2) {
        if (arg1 instanceof Point) {
            // arg2 can now only be `undefined` because the instanceof check removes 
            // the second call signature (where arg1 is a number) from the list of possible 
            // call signatures
            this.x = arg1.getX();
            this.y = arg1.getY();
        } else {
            // arg2 can now only be `number` because the failed instanceof check removes 
            // the first call signature from the list of possible signatures
            this.x = arg1;
            this.y = arg2;
        }
    }
}

I guess the type narrowing is harder to implement but at least the automatic type inference of each argument shouldn't be that hard. So it would be very nice if a future version of TypeScript could do this so using overloading gets a bit easier.

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript / JavaScript code
This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. new expression-level syntax)

Duplicate of #25352 ?

Wesley Wigham (@weswigham)

Wesley Wigham (@weswigham) This is not a duplicate. This issue is about inferring the overloads of a function automatically.

This could be taken further, and include adding to the arguments within the function.

class MyClass {
    a?: number;
    b?: string;

    constructor(a: number): void;
    constructor(b: string): void;
    constructor(a: number, b: string): void;
    constructor(): void {
        if (arguments.length === 1) { // [string | number]
            if (typeof arguments[0] === 'number') { // [number]
                this.a = arguments[0]; // number
            } else {
                this.b = arguments[0]; // string
            }
        } else { // [number, string]
            this.a = arguments[0]; // number
            this.b = arguments[1]; // string
        }
    }
}

There are two parts to this:

Automatically infer the types of the the arguments, this should be easy really.
Destructuring tuples would need to work in some type-safe way as inferring specific parameters is equivalent to destructuring tuples.

More clearly, we can get this far today already:

class MyClass {
    a?: number;
    b?: string;

    constructor(a: number): void;
    constructor(b: string): void;
    constructor(a: number, b: string): void;
    constructor(...args: [number] | [string] | [number, string]): void {
        if (args.length === 1) { // [string | number]
            if (typeof args[0] === 'number') { // [number]
                this.a = args[0]; // number
            } else {
                this.b = args[0]; // string
            }
        } else { // [number, string]
            this.a = args[0]; // number
            this.b = args[1]; // string
        }
    }
}

Which works as expected, inferring the type of args in this example should be pretty easy fulfilling 1 but 2 is harder.

Fulfilling 2. would be equivalent to making this type correct:

declare const z: ['a', A] | ['b', B]

const [type, value] = z
if (type === 'a') {
  const a: A = value // Needs to be inferred as A
}

// This works already so it can be surprising/annoying that the destructuring equivalent doesn't work
if (z[0] === 'a') {
  const a: A = z[1] // Already inferred to be A
}

How could this work? Well I can think of one way that would just involve de-sugaring destructuring at the type-level (but not runtime de-sugaring as the tuples might still be mutable) to be equivalent to the second if-statement in that example that works. This way the variable's type could be context dependent rather than fixed at destructuring time.

Interestingly if this technique could be made to work this wouldn't really be any harder to extend to work for all destructuring not just tuples. So existing discriminants could also be destructured with type inference just working:

declare const z: { type: 'a', a: A } | { type: 'b', b: B }

const { type, ...rest } = z
if (type === 'a') {
  const a: { a: A } = rest // would be type-correct
}

Please add support for this. It's really frustrating when dealing with functions that have multiple overloads (eg. subsets of a base object) to have to duplicate the definitions when TypeScript could easily infer it for us.

This feature would be pretty valuable when dealing with node-style callback:

function checkNumber(x: number): void {}
function checkUndefined(x: undefined): void {}

function callback(err: number, val: undefined): void;
function callback(err: undefined, val: number): void;
function callback(err: number|undefined, val: number|undefined): void {
    if (err == null) {
        checkUndefined(err);
        checkNumber(val); // would like to be able to infer that this is a number
    } else {
        checkUndefined(val); // would like to infer that this is undefined
        checkNumber(err)
    }
}

Honestly the absence of narrowing within the implementation makes overloads almost pointless for interfaces as anyone implementing struggles with the narrowing side.

This feature would be pretty valuable when dealing with node-style callback:

function checkNumber(x: number): void {}
function checkUndefined(x: undefined): void {}

function callback(err: number, val: undefined): void;
function callback(err: undefined, val: number): void;
function callback(err: number|undefined, val: number|undefined): void {
    if (err == null) {
        checkUndefined(err);
        checkNumber(val); // would like to be able to infer that this is a number
    } else {
        checkUndefined(val); // would like to infer that this is undefined
        checkNumber(err)
    }
}

I found this issue while trying to solve for a problem like this.

I would think a lot of other folks are trying to solve the same problem since this pattern is so popular. Is there a best practices for something like this?

Honestly the absence of narrowing within the implementation makes overloads almost pointless for interfaces as anyone implementing struggles with the narrowing side.

So TS4.4 added control flow analysis on discriminants, I wonder if that support could be extended to tuples such that inferred types after narrowing.

So TS4.4 added control flow analysis on discriminants, I wonder if that support could be extended to tuples such that inferred types after narrowing.

So TS4.6 just added a limited version of this in way of inference of args for discriminated tuples. Hopefully we will see support for more generic signatures in future.

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Suggestion: Automatically infer argument types in overloaded function implementation #28172

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Suggestion: Automatically infer argument types in overloaded function implementation #28172

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weswigham commented on Oct 26, 2018

pathurs commented on Nov 11, 2018

Jamesernator commented on Apr 15, 2019

ianstormtaylor commented on Jun 9, 2020

daprahamian commented on Feb 1, 2021

runspired commented on May 24, 2021

KayBeSee commented on Jan 16, 2022

Jamesernator commented on Jan 18, 2022

Jamesernator commented on Mar 1, 2022

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