TypeScript Support

[enijar]

Are there plans to provide TypeScript support?

I'm not suggesting a rewrite of the lib in TypeScript (although that would be nice from a maintainer's perspective), but adding a type definition export.

For example defining all the component options, e.g. for Block:

import type { Object3D } from "three";

export interface BlockOptions extends Object3D {
  width: number;
  height: number;
  borderWidth?: number;
  // ...
}

[felixmariotto]

Would that be similar to this PR ? I had to reject it because it needed to get rid of the composition structure, which I find more intuitive.

[enijar]

It wouldn't involve editing any of the existing source files, only adding a new types.d.ts file, and updating updating the package.json to specify the types, e.g.:

{
  "name": "three-mesh-ui",
  "main": "dist/three-mesh-ui.js",
  "module": "src/three-mesh-ui.js",
  "types": "src/types.d.ts"
}

[felixmariotto]

Well if it does not involve adding anything to the existing files, then yes.
As I said I'm not into TS at all though, so while I would merge a PR, I would not work on it myself.

[enijar]

Understood, I will work on adding the types.d.ts at some future point, when I'm more familiar with the project. I plan on working on some of the features in the Roadmap first.

[felixmariotto]

thanks a lot for your help 😊

[kevinjardine]

Would love types for this. I like the library but can't use it without types as I'm a TypeScript developer.

[felixmariotto]

@enijar any update on this ?

[enijar]

I'm still in the process of working on this (when I have the free time). I have the types for Block almost done, but there's still lots more types to add for the other components

[felixmariotto]

If you submit a PR as draft @kevinjardine could maybe help you by pushing a few commits ?
I understand it's a lot of work..

[kevinjardine]

I'd be happy to help where I can.

Kevin

[enijar]

I've created a WIP pull request here #146

[JoeCoppola-HIA]

Hey @enijar, happy to see your WIP TS support PR #146 made it into 6.3.0. This update is a great first step towards supporting TS further, but is currently missing a lot of the existing interface, breaking any TS user that updates to 6.3.0 and may also have TS users believe the library is much more limited than it really is. Any thoughts on how to disable Types for existing users such as us for now? Or would it be better off having Types updated to expose everything?

Edit: For now, to get around the issue of importing, we have found adding // @ts-ignore satisfies the TS compiler while keeping the original functionality. We are going to go with this temporary fix while we wait for TS support to expand. If we have time, we will try to contribute updates on that front as well.

[enijar]

@JoeCoppola-HIA do you have a more concrete example of what exactly is missing from the types?

I've added all the component types and essentially given them a type of any, so that TypeScript doesn't complain.

Feel free to make a PR and add the missing types that are causing issues for you, or list them in a comment here and I will get to work adding them.

The idea with PR #146 was not to be fully typed, but slowly get to 100% type coverage over time