How to define a regex-matched string type in Typescript?

Question

Is it possible to define an interface which has some information on the format of a string? Take the following example:

interface timeMarkers{
    markerTime: string[]        
};

an example would be:

{
   markerTime: ["0:00","1:30", "1:48"]                   
}

My question: Is there a way to define the type for markerTime such that that the string value must always match this regex, instead of declaring it as simply string[] and going from there?

var reg = /[0-9]?[0-9]:[0-9][0-9]/;

Answer 1

There is no way to define such a type. There is a proposal on GitHub to support this, but it currently does not appear to be a priority. Vote on it and maybe the team might include it in a future release.

Answer 2

I was just looking for a similar feature right now, too!

And I ended up thinking about this: Would'nt it be possible to get this running by setting up a little more complex dev-environment? Maybe you could use a file-watcher to trigger tsc and look up TypeError events to update your *d.ts file.

I mean something like:

export type superRegexType = 'type-1' | 'type-2' | '/type-/';

and as a hook something (rudimental suggestion):

const onTypeError = (err: Error, nameOfTypeSuperRegexType: string) => {
  const myTypesFile = require('fs').readFileSync(`path/to/\*d.ts`) as string;
  const searchFor = `export type ${nameOfTypeSuperRegexType} =`;
  const getDefinition = (inMyTypesFile: string, searchFor: string) => {
    const typeDefinitionString = inMyTypesFile.split(searchFor)[0].split(';')[0] + ';';
    const stringsInThere = typeDefinitionString.split(' | ').map(_str => _str.trim());
    const myRegexStr = stringsInThere.pop();
    return {
      oldTypeDefinitionString: typeDefinitionString,
      stringsInThere,
      myRegexStr,
      myRegex: new RegExp(myRegexStr)
    };
  };
  const myTypeDefinition = getDefinition(myTypesFile, searchFor);

  const shouldDynamicallyAddType = myTypeDefinition.myRegex.exec(err.message);
  if (!shouldDynamicallyAddType) {
    console.log("this is a real TypeError");
    console.error(err);
    return;
  } else {
    const indexInErrMessage = shouldDynamicallyAddType.index;
    const _endIdx = err.message.indexOf('\'');
    const typeToAdd = err.message.slice(indexInErrMessage, _endIdx).trim();
    myTypeDefinition.stringsInThere.push(typeToAdd);
    const updatedTypeDefinitionString = `${searchFor} ${myTypeDefinition.stringsInThere.join(' | ')} ${myTypeDefinition.myRegexStr};`;
    myTypesFile.replace(myTypeDefinition.oldTypeDefinitionString, updatedTypeDefinitionString);
    // --> save that new d.ts and return hopefully watch the lint-error disappearing
  }
}

Maybe this kind of solution would allow you to dynamically add types based on your RegEx on compiletime.

What do you think?