What is the best way to modify just the method signature in typescript?

I'm looking to implement an external array-like interface called ListOf<T>. It has properties like length, indexed access, and a forEach method that takes a callback function. Here's how it looks:

interface ListOf<T> {
  readonly length: number;
  readonly [index: number]: T;
  item(index: number): T | null;
  forEach(callback: (value: T, key: number, parent: ListOf<T>) => void, thisArg?: any): void;
}

To implement this interface, I decided to extend the Array class with my SimpleList<T> class:

export class SimpleList<T> extends Array<T> implements ListOf<T> {
  constructor(arrayLength: number) {
    super(arrayLength);
  }
  item(index: number): T | null {
    return this[index] || null;
  }
}

However, I encountered an error:

Error TS2420: Class 'SimpleList' incorrectly implements interface 'ListOf'.
Types of property 'forEach' are incompatible.
...
Property 'item' is missing in type 'T[]' but required in type 'ListOf'

To fix this, I had to add a custom implementation for the forEach method:

// class SimpleList<T>
forEach(callback: (value: T, key: number, parent: SimpleList<T>) => void, thisArg?: any): void {
    super.forEach(callback, thisArg);
}

While this solution works, it feels redundant as I am basically just calling the superclass method. Is there a way to make TypeScript recognize that the original Array method already matches the interface signature without having to override it?

On another note, I believe the Array class should have declared its forEach method with a more specific parameter type:

forEach(callbackfn: (value: T, index: number, array: /*originally T[]*/ this) => void, thisArg?: any): void;

This change could potentially lead to a cleaner solution. Any insights on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Answer №1

What you are attempting to do is deemed technically unsafe, particularly based on the declaration of Array. TypeScript raises a concern that the callback provided to forEach() may potentially receive a third argument as an arbitrary Array<T> instead of this. The potential change in using this over Array method declarations was discussed in a pull request at microsoft/TypeScript#46781, which remains unresolved.

Your proposed workaround:

forEach(callback: (value: T, key: number, parent: SimpleList<T>) => void, thisArg?: any): void {
  super.forEach(callback, thisArg); // generates an error!
}

also contains an error for the same reason. Additionally, by simply forwarding the call to super, there seems to be no significant override happening.

An alternative suggestion would be explicitly narrowing the type of SimpleList's forEach without affecting the produced JavaScript code, by utilizing the declare modifier approach. Unfortunately, applying declare directly onto methods is not supported. To work around this limitation, consider transforming it into a function-valued property like so:

class SimpleList<T> extends Array<T> implements ListOf<T> {
  constructor(arrayLength: number) {
    super(arrayLength);
  }
  item(index: number): T | null {
    return this[index] || null;
  }  
  declare forEach: 
    (callback: (value: T, key: number, parent: SimpleList<T>) => void, thisArg?: any) => void;
}

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