Typescript Abstract Property

  • Reflection is a feature in the Java programming language. It allows an executing Java program to examine or “introspect” upon itself, and manipulate internal properties of the program. For example, it’s possible for a Java class to obtain the names of all its members and display them. Reflect has been introduced in Javascript.
  • Static Properties; Abstract Classes; TypeScript Simple Class Example. Let's create a simple Employee class with the following. Unlike an interface, an abstract class may contain implementation details for its members. The abstract keyword is used to define abstract classes as well as abstract methods within an abstract class.

Abstract Classes. TypeScript has abstract classes, which are classes that have partial implementation of a class and in which other classes can be derived from. They can’t be instantiated directly. Unlike interfaces, abstract classes can have implementation details for their members. To declare an abstract class, we can use the abstract keyword.

In this Blog Post, We are going to learn the Abstract class tutorials in typescript.

Ts Abstract Class

It is one of the concepts of Object Oriented Programming. Other concepts are Classes, polymorphism, Encapsulation and Interfaces.

Abstract Class

Typescript supports object-oriented programming concepts using classes, interfaces, and abstract classes. the class is defined with the abstract keyword is called abstract classes. It is used to provide an abstraction

These may not be created instances, instead of instances created by extending abstract classes. Abstract methods contain a signature, not method implementations.

Property

Syntax

Abstract methods

Methods without implementation or body is called abstract methods. It contains only method signature. abstract methods can be declared by append abstract keyword Implementation of this methods can be done by Classes which extends this abstract class if the abstract method is declared in a class, the class must be declared with abstract keyword. Abstract classes contain abstract methods and nonabstract methods.

Syntax

Example

An abstract class is declared with an abstract method

Typescript Abstract Property Management

Now create an instance of Abstract class, It throws compilation error:Cannot create an instance of an abstract class

Extend Abstract class - Inheritance Example

An abstract class can be extended by subclasses like normal classes and need to provide an implementation for abstract methods In the following example, Created an instance of a subclass, you can call all methods of abstract classes

Ts abstract class

Abstract Properties and get/set methods

Typescript Virtual Property

An abstract class can also declare abstract member variables and also accessories can be declared abstract methods using set and get accessor typescript.

Abstract class implements interface

Abstract classes implement Interfaces and need to provide an abstract method, otherwise it gives error Class ‘MyClass’ incorrectly implements interface ‘MyInterface’.

Abstract static methods

Implement

Abstract methods should not be used with static modified. The below example code is not allowed as it gives an error, the static modifier cannot be used with an abstract modifier.

TypeScript 2.8's conditional types can be used to create compile-time inference assertions, which can be used to writetests that verify the behavior of TypeScript's inference on your API.

This is a very powerful tool for improving the usability of your API. To demonstrate, let's imagine that we are buildinga 'pluck' function:

While this may look like a perfectly good type signature and implementation, when we consider the usability of thereturned value's type, there are going to be some surprises—especially in TypeScript's --strict mode.

For this example, let's assume we have the following interface:

If we use this naive version of pluck, we'll see that there are some unexpected consequences of type inference.

Even though the intent of the API is to return a structure that's a subset of the plucked object, it has two unintendedusability consequences with TypeScript's inference behavior:

  1. The returned object has members are all of the type T | undefined. This will cause frustrations when using thispluck function in --strict mode.
  2. Keys that are not specified are optionally present in the returned object's type. We should be able to know thatthe bool key will never be present in the return type.

How can we verify compile-time inference behavior?

If we wanted API usability/behavior to act a certain way at runtime, we could write a few tests which assert thatbehavior and then modify our implementation of pluck so that our desired behavior is verified. However, since thebehavior we want is something that is determined at compile-time, we need to resort to telling the compiler toperform these assertions for us at compile-time.

Using TypeScript 2.8's conditional types, we can define the shape and inference behavior of the API we want to buildprior to actually implementing it. Think of this as a sort of TDD for your types.

We can do this by (1) asserting the inferred value is assignable to the types that we want (conditional types comein handy here), and (2) cause the compiler to reject code at compile time when these assertions are not true.

As a tiny example, if we want to write a compile-time test that asserts 'this value should really be inferred as anumber,' we can do the following:

Using these assertions to make a better pluck

Applying this technique to our API, we can describe the behavior we want for our case #1 (members having an unwanted | undefined):

Typescript abstract readonly property

Excellent, now that we have a compile-time error that asserts our behavior, we can redefine pluck's type signature to bemore accurate.

This compiles, which means our problem #1 is solved! Unfortunately, this signature is a lie. While we 'fixed' #1, westill need to deal with our case #2, where missing members are still present in the returned type.

To check for this, we need a few type devices to fail compile if a key is present in a type:

Asserting the absence of a key

There are a few type operations that we need to know in order to check if an object does not have a key.

Typescript Abstract Static

First off, here's a brief refresher on the building blocks we'll use:

So let's build a type device that evaluates to true when an object T does not have a key K:

Putting it all together

Now with this TrueIfMissing type device, we can assert that we do not want to have certain keys present in thereturned object from our pluck:

Finally we can create a version of pluck that satisfies all of our usability concerns:

Why go through all this work?

When we have automated tests which assert the behavior of our code, we gain confidence that changes to our software willnot introduce regressions. However, when designing an API which is meant to leverage type inference to gain usability,there hasn't really been an obvious way of doing this.

This technique allows us to effectively test how TypeScript performs its inference for users of our API. We canbuild a test module which makes assertions about our desired type inference, and if the test file compiles successfully,our assertions are correct! That way, if our API subtly changes in a way that makes return values or callback parametersharder to infer, we can be alerted to this by a failure to compile.

Typescript Static Method

If you happen to know of other techniques that can be used to accomplish this sort of compile-time assertion, I'd loveto hear them! Please reach out and let me know!

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