Making optional properties nullable in TypeScript

Let’s say you follow the TypeScript project coding guidelines and only use undefined. Your types are defined with non-nullable optional properties (e.g., x?: number), but the data coming from the API returns null instead.

You decide to write a function to strip all these null values from the response, so that they conform to your types:

function stripNullableProperties(obj) {
  // Return a new object without null properties
}

How can you strongly type such helper without duplicating your input and output types? You could try:

function stripNullableProperties<T extends {}>(obj: T): T;

But it won’t work in strict null checking mode, since obj might have null values that are not assignable to the non-nullable optional properties in T:

type A = {
  x: number;
  y?: number;
};

stripNullableProperties<A>({
  x: 1,
  y: null // Error: Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'number | undefined'.
});

What you really need is something like:

function stripNullableProperties<T extends {}>(obj: NullableOptional<T>): T;

The NullableOptional<T> type

The NullableOptional<T> type constructs a type with all optional properties of T set to nullable:

type A = {
  x: number;
  y?: number;
};

type B = NullableOptional<A>;
// {
//   x: number;
//   y?: number | null;
// }

You won’t find NullableOptional in the TypeScript documentation, and that's because it's a custom type. It actually looks like this:

type RequiredKeys<T> = { [K in keyof T]-?: {} extends { [P in K]: T[K] } ? never : K }[keyof T];

type OptionalKeys<T> = { [K in keyof T]-?: {} extends { [P in K]: T[K] } ? K : never }[keyof T];

type PickRequired<T> = Pick<T, RequiredKeys<T>>;

type PickOptional<T> = Pick<T, OptionalKeys<T>>;

type Nullable<T> = { [P in keyof T]: T[P] | null };

type NullableOptional<T> = PickRequired<T> & Nullable<PickOptional<T>>;

In short:

1. pick the required properties from T;
2. pick the optional properties from T and make them nullable;
3. intersect (1) with (2).

With this, you can remove all nullable properties from an object whose interface should only have non-nullable optional properties, while still ensuring type safety:

type A = {
  x: number;
  y?: number;
};

stripNullableProperties<A>({
  x: 1,
  y: null
});
// {
//   x: 1
// }: A

You could always do a type assertion and avoid all this trouble, but ensuring type safety — even in seemingly unharmful cases like this one — pays off in the long run.

Originally published at rbardini.com on December 20, 2019.