If you are aware of the specific type of element you are receiving, consider using the predefined element types instead of casting to any
. TypeScript offers built-in types for all the basic DOM element types such as div, anchor, span, and option.
For instance, if you are retrieving a textarea element, you can use:
(<HTMLTextAreaElement>document.getElementById('MyElementId')).value
When you use the getElementById
function, it returns just a generic Element
, since TypeScript cannot determine the exact type of element that will be returned (if any). However, because more specific element types like HTMLOptionElement
, HTMLTextAreaElement
, etc., are all derived from the Element
type, you can narrow down your return type with a cast to achieve the desired type safety.