Typescript ReturnType

Typescript includes several useful utility types to enhance the type declarations of your code-base.

The ReturnType function is one of my favorite ones, as it helps reduce type definition duplication.

Suppose you have the following function definition:

type IsInText = (
  text: string
) => (
  term: string,
  minCount: number,
  maxCount?: number,
  caseSensitive?: boolean
) => boolean

Now we want to write a function allTermsInText, that takes the function returned by isInText as an argument. It should be used like:

allTermsInText(["Typescript", "awesome"], isInText("Typescript is awesome!"))

Here is the definition without the utility type:

type AllTermsInText = (
  terms: string[],
  search: (
    term: string,
    minCount: number,
    maxCount?: number,
    caseSensitive?: boolean
  ) => boolean
) => boolean

And here the same function definition, but using ReturnType for the parameters:

let AllTermsInText = (terms: string[], search: ReturnType<IsInText>) => {
  return !terms.find(term => !search(term, 1))
}