Create Functions that Return Types
The solution to our ReturnWhatIPassIn type helper has some syntax we haven't seen yet:
type ReturnWhatIPassIn<T> = T;
The angle brackets next to ReturnWhatIPassIn instantiate a type argument called T. After the equals sign, we 'return' it by using T.
Note that we could name `T
Transcript
0:01 There's a lot of new syntax here, so let's examine what's going on. We have a type helper which is ReturnWhatIPassIn. This has now a couple of little angled brackets here, and it creates this variable called T. I can call this whatever I want. I can call it TWhatever, and it will still work the same way.
0:23 What happens is, now when I have type Something = ReturnWhatIPassIn<something>, this is going to equal whatever I pass in. We can really, really run with this. Imagine if we have 12 here, for instance. I could do this or undefined, for instance. Now it would be 12 or undefined.
0:47 What this allows us to do is create functions which can return other types. This is a function now. This is the argument to the function, and this is what the function returns. If we were to remove this, then it would no longer be a function. It would be a static value. This is just 12 here.
1:07 Whereas, if I declare it with this, then we can do really, really crazy stuff with this. We can start creating these functions which return other types. I can add as many of these as I want to here -- TWhatever2, TWhatever3. I can keep going and going and going. I can give them default values. I can make them constrained to certain things. That's what we're going to learn about in this section here.
1:35 This whole idea of type functions, this is a lot about what we call generics on the type level. You might have heard of generics before, and I've got an entire module talking about generics. Generics is a pretty widely used term. I'm going to refer to these mostly as type helpers because that's sort of what they are. We have a function that returns another type.
2:00 Generics in functions, generics in classes, they do slightly different things, but use similar syntaxes. I wanted to introduce this first because this is like the basis for what a lot of TypeScript is built on. If we look at, for instance, the record time, so if I say Yeah = Record, and I'll put any, any in here now, and if we command-click to this, then you can see this uses the same sort of pattern.
2:25 If we ignore this extends for now, then what we get is type record equals this, so it's a function with two arguments, K and T, and it returns something here. That's the whole idea about these type helpers. You can pass in arguments and return things from that function.
