typescript-definitions

Exports serde-serializable structs and enums to Typescript definitions.

Motivation

Now that rust 2018 has landed there is no question that people should be using rust to write server applications (what are you thinking!). But generating wasm from rust code to run in the browser is currently much too bleeding edge.

Since javascript will be dominant on the client for the forseeable future there remains the problem of communicating with your javascript from your rust server.

Fundamental to this is to keep the datatypes on either side of the connection (http/websocket) in sync.

Typescript is an incremental typing system for javascript that is as almost(!) as tricked as rust... so why not create a typescript definition library based on your rust code?

Please see Credits.

example:

extern crate serde_derive;
extern crate typescript_definitions;
extern crate wasm_bindgen;

use::wasm_bindgen::prelude::*;
use::serde_derive::Serialize;
use::typescript_definitions::TypescriptDefinition;

#[derive(Serialize, TypescriptDefinition)]
#[serde(tag = "tag", content = "fields")]
enum Enum {
    #[allow(unused)]
    V1 {
        #[serde(rename = "Foo")]
        foo: bool,
    },
    #[allow(unused)]
    V2 {
        #[serde(rename = "Bar")]
        bar: i64,
        #[serde(rename = "Baz")]
        baz: u64,
    },
    #[allow(unused)]
    V3 {
        #[serde(rename = "Quux")]
        quux: String,
    },
}

With wasm-bindgen this will output in your .d.ts definition file:

export type Enum = 
      {tag: "V1", fields: { Foo: boolean } }
    | {tag: "V2", fields: { Bar: number, Baz: number } }
    | {tag: "V3", fields: { Quux: string } }
    ;

Using `typescript-definitions`

NB: Please note these macros - by default - work only for the debug build since they pollute the code with strings and methods all of which are proabably not useful in any release (Since you are only using them to extract information about your current types from your code). In release builds they become no-ops. This means that there is no cost to your release exes/libs or your users by using these macros. Zero cost abstraction indeed. Beautiful.

See features below if you really want them in your release build.

There is a very small example in the repository that works for me (TM) if you want to get started on your own.

This crate only exports two derive macros: TypescriptDefinition and TypeScriptify.

In your crate create a lib target in Cargo.toml pointing to your "interfaces"

[lib]
name = "mywasm" # whatever... you decide
path = "src/interface.rs"
crate-type = ["cdylib"]


[dependencies]
typescript-definitions = "0.1.5"
wasm-bindgen = "0.2"
serde = "1"
serde_derive = "1"

Then you can run (see here if you don't want to go near WASM):

cargo +nightly build --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
mkdir pkg
wasm-bindgen target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/debug/mywasm.wasm --typescript --out-dir pkg/
cat pkg/mywasm.d.ts

If you don't have these tools then see here:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown --toolchain nightly
cargo +nightly install wasm-bindgen-cli

or use wasm-pack (the typescript library will be in pkg/mywasm.d.ts)

curl https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/installer/init.sh -sSf | sh
wasm-pack build
cat pkg/mywasm.d.ts

Using `type_script_ify`

You can ignore WASM totally and derive using TypeScriptify as long as you have the following TypeScriptifyTrait Trait in scope (which you have to provide):

// interface.rs
extern crate serde_derive;
extern crate typescript_definitions;
// wasm_bindgen not needed
// use::wasm_bindgen::prelude::*;
use::serde_derive::Serialize;
use::typescript_definitions::TypeScriptify;
// *you* have to provide this Trait because, currently, rust proc-macro crates can't
// export any public Traits etc... sorry about that.
pub trait TypeScriptifyTrait {
    fn type_script_ify() -> &'static str;
}
#[derive(Serialize, TypeScriptify)]
pub struct MyStruct {
    v : i32,
}

Then in main.rs (say) you can generate your own typescript specification using Struct::type_script_ify():

mod interface;
// need to pull in trait
use self::interface::TypeScriptifyTrait;

fn main() {
    println!("{}", interface::MyStruct::type_script_ify());
    // prints "export type MyStruct = { v: number };"
}

Use the cfg macro To protect any use of type_script_ify()

if cfg!(any(debug_assertions, feature="export-typescript") {
    let s = A::type_script_ify();
}

If you have a generic struct such as:

#[derive(Serialize, TypeScriptify)]
pub struct Value<T> {
    value: T
}

then you need to choose a concrete type to generate the typescript: Value<i32>::type_script_ify(). The concrete type doesn't matter as long as it obeys rust restrictions; the output will still be generic export type Value<T> { value: T }.

Currently type bounds are discarded.

So basically with TypeScriptify you have to create some binary that, via println! or similar statements, will cough up a typescript library file. I guess you have more control here... at the expense of complicating your Cargo.toml file and your code.

Features

As we said before typescript-descriptions macros pollute your code with static strings and other garbage. Hence, by default, they only work in debug mode.

If you actually want T::type_script_ify() (for TypeScriptify) available in your release code then change your Cargo.toml file to:

[dependencies.typescript-definitions]
version = "0.1.5"
features = ["export-typescript"]

## OR

typescript-definitions = { version="0.1.5",  features=["export-typescript"]  }

AFAIK the strings generated by TypescriptDescription don't survive the invocation of wasm-bindgen even in debug mode. So your *.wasm files are clean. You still need to add --features=export-typescript to generate anything in release mode though.

Serde Internally or Adjacently tagged Enums

See Serde Docs.

This crate understands #[serde(tag="type")] and #[serde(tag="tag", content="fields")] attributes but only for Struct variants.

It doesn't do Untagged or Externally tagged enums but defaults to #[serde(tag="kind")] (Internal).

The default for NewTypes and Tuple types is #[serde(tag="kind", content="fields")] (Adjacent).

Problems

Oh yes there are problems....

Currently typescript-descriptions will not fail (AFAIK) even for structs and enums with function types Fn(A,B) -> C (generates C). These make no sense in the current context (data types, json serialization) so this might be considered a bug. Watchout!

This might change if use cases show that an error would be better.

The follwing types are rendered as:

Option<T> => T | undefined
HashMap<K,V> => { [key:K]:V } (same for BTreeMap)
HashSet<V> => V[] (same for BTreeSet)

An enum that is all Unit types such as

enum Color {
    Red,
    Green,
    Blue
}

is rendered as:

enum Color {
    Red = "Red",
    Green ="Green",
    Blue = "Blue"
}

because serde_json will render Color::Red as the string "Red" instead of Color.Red (because JSON).

Serde always seems to render Result (in json) as {"Ok": T } | {"Err": E} i.e as "External" so we do too.

If you reference another type in a struct e.g.

    #[derive(Serialize)]
    struct B<T> {q: T}
    
    #[derive(Serialize, TypescriptDefinition)]
    struct A {
        x : f64, /* simple */
        b: B<f64>,
    }

then this will "work" (producing export type A = { x: number ,b: B<number> })) but B will be opaque to javascript unless B is also #[derive(TypescriptDefinition)].

Currently there is no help for this.

Formatting is rubbish and won't pass tslint. This is due to the quote! crate taking control of the output token stream. I don't know what it does with whitespace for example... (is whitespace a token in rust?). Anyhow... this crate applies a few bandaid regex patches to pretty things up.

We are not as clever as serde in determining the actual type. For example this won't "work":

use std::borrow::Cow as Pig;

#[derive(TypeScriptify)]
struct S<'a> {
    pig: Pig<'a, str>,

gives export type S = { pig : Pig<string> } instead of export type S = { pig : string }

We can't reasonably obey serde attributes like "flatten" since we would need to find the actual Struct object (from somewhere) and query its fields.

TODO

Generate a typescript verifier for each type (maybe).

export verify_A<T>(obj: any): boolean {/*... */ }
// *or*
export verify_A<T>(obj: any): {Ok: A<T>} | {Err: string} {/* ... */}

or something...

Then one could:

let o : any = JSON.parse(some_string_from_the_inet);
if verify_A<number>(o) {
    return obj as A<number>
} else {
    // err....
}

maybe...

Credits

For intial inspiration see http://timryan.org/2019/01/22/exporting-serde-types-to-typescript.html

Forked from wasm-typescript-definition by @tcr which was forked from rust-serde-schema by @srijs.

type_script_ify idea from typescriptify by @n3phtys

Probably some others...

License

MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option.

typescript-definitions 0.1.5