this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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TypeScript

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I have googled this and even got to the second page, and there does not seem to be any kind of consensus.

As far as I can tell, it's a bad idea because it creates code you don't see and accepts inputs that you wouldn't want. And yet, many people seem to like them more than, say, const unions due to being easier to refactor in bulk.

So what gives? Is this a case of IT people having very strong opinions on stuff that doesn't matter? Or is there a technical reason for or against it?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Basically, you can use them if you want to, but every single case where you would use them would be better served with a union type.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

To add, turning everything into an enum can make the code nearly unreadable and hard to work with. This isn't Rust, and there's no performance gain for using enums over string unions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Or by an enum class.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Another good option is const objects, it's a recommended alternative in the official docs. https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/enums.html#objects-vs-enums

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use enums when you need enums. Don't use them when you don't need them. What's the issue?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You probably don't ever need enums since the const keyword was added after enums and const objects handle enum use cases unions don't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You mean const assertions. Well, the thing is that const assertions are not enums. They don't handle enum use cases in any way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I'm talking about if you want an object syntax for accessing constant types to act as an enum https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/enums.html#objects-vs-enums

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

At work, when I was helping with some frontend stuff, we used object literals.

const DIRECTIONS = {
  UP: "UP",
  DOWN: "DOWN"
} as const;

type DIRECTIONS = typeof DIRECTIONS[keyof typeof DIRECTIONS];

Taken from option 2 in this blog post. https://maxheiber.medium.com/alternatives-to-typescript-enums-50e4c16600b1`___`

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is, in my opinion, the absolute best way to do it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

That's what the typescript official docs recommend as an alternative too

https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/enums.html#objects-vs-enums

The const keyword was added after enums. I doubt enums would exist if the feature was added earlier.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago