A word about the type Object (original) (raw)

Overview

@type {Object} may seem like the right type for a lot of JavaScript patterns, but in the Closure Compiler type system, Object is a very loose type. There are usually better alternatives.

NOTE: this article pre-dates "strictCheckTypes". With "strictCheckTypes" enabled the compile will warn about referencing properties that only available on subclasses and the Object type is no longer loose.

Namespaces

Namespaces are best typed as @const (or const for simple names) without a type annotation:

const ns = {}; /** @const */ ns.anInnerNamespace = {};

This tells the Closure Compiler to track the object as a unique, anonymous type. By contrast, annotations like @const {Object} and @type {Object} tell the compiler to treat it as any Object in the program (including any subtype of Object).

Note: @const indicates only that the name to which the value is assigned is never overwritten. In particular, for a namespace, it does not indicate that the set properties of the object fix nor that the properties values are themselves immutable.

Enumerations

Objects used to define a set of values should be typed with @enum. Even if you don't use the enum name as a type anywhere, the enum definition restricts the object type and allows strong typing of the referenced values.

/** @enum {ValueType} */ var enum = { KEY: value };

Map-like objects

NOTE: For many uses JavaScript's Map collection is a better choose. This section is obsolete since ES6 introduced a built-in Map, which has nice properties that Object lacks.

Objects used as maps for runtime additions or lookups should restrict their key and value types using generics.

/** @type {!Object<number, number>} */ var map = {};

/** @const {!Object<string, ValueType>} */ var map = { 'string key': value };

Records

"Object" when used as a function parameter type when expecting a collection of properties, are often better expressed as a record type:

/** @param {{key:value}} props */ function f(props) {}

Where optional values should include "undefined":

/** @param {{required:string, optional:(string|undefined)}} props */ function f(props) {}

Record types tend to be verbose, and a typedef is often more practical:

/** @typedef {{required:string, optional:(string|undefined)}} */ var Params;

/** @param {Params} props */ function f(props) {}

Note that record types are non-nullable by default.

Weak namespace type warnings

If you got here because you got a warning from the compiler about a weak namespace type and simply want to silence the warnings, you can use the type Object<?,?> which will tell the compiler that you are deliberately using a weak type.