TypeScript - Alias for custom types

In this tutorial we will learn to create alias for custom types in TypeScript.

In the previous tutorials we learned about functions and objects and we also covered arrow functions and also created custom types.

Create a custom type

In the following example we are creating a variable of custom type.

let sampleUser: { username: string, points: number };

So, we have a variable sampleUser of object type. The object type has two properties. The first one is username of type string and the second one is points of type number.

We can now assign a value to the sampleUser variable that matches the above type.

In the following example we are assigning a value to the sampleUser variable.

// declare variable and type
let sampleUser: { username: string, points: number };

// now assign value
sampleUser = {
  username: 'Yusuf Shakeel',
  points: 10
};

Create an alias for custom type

Following is the syntax to create an alias for custom type.

type aliasName = customType;

Where, type is a keyword to create an alias. The name of the alias is aliasName and it is an alias for the given custom type denoted by customType.

Example: Alias for object type

So, in the above example we have a custom type for the sampleUser variable.

{ username: string, points: number }

We can create an alias for the above type as follows.

type UserData = { username: string, points: number };

Now, we can use the new type UserData to create variables.

// creating a variable of type UserData
let sampleUser: UserData;

And we can now assign a value to the variable sampleUser of type UserData.

// assign value
sampleUser = {
  username: 'Yusuf Shakeel',
  points: 10
};

The final code for the above custom type will look like the following.

// custom type
type UserData = { username: string, points: number };

// creating a variable of type UserData
let sampleUser: UserData;

// assign value
sampleUser = {
  username: 'Yusuf Shakeel',
  points: 10
};

// output
console.log(sampleUser);

Lets take one more example of custom type and this time we will create a function type.

Example: Alias for function type

In the following example we are creating an alias for a custom function type.

type myFunction = (x: number, y: number) => number;

So, the alias is myFunction. We are using arrow function to define the function type.

Looking at the function type (x: number, y: number) => number we can tell that the function will take two parameters of type number and will return value of type number.

Now, we will create a variable using the alias myFunction.

let addNumbers: myFunction;

So, addNumbers is a variable that is of myFunction type. This means, we can only assign functions to the addNumbers variable that takes two parameters of number type and returns number value.

Now, we assign a function to the above variable.

addNumbers = function(a: number, b: number): number {
  return a + b;
};

The final code will look like the following.

// custom function type
type myFunction = (x: number, y: number) => number;

// create variable using custom type alias
let addNumbers: myFunction;

// now assign a function
addNumbers = function(a: number, b: number): number {
  return a + b;
};

// calling
console.log("Sum 1 + 2 = " + addNumbers(1, 2));