TypeScript Interview Questions Part 4 - Interfaces, Type Aliases

Question:

What are Type Aliases?

Answer:

Type Aliases allow us to give a type a name. Here is an example of how a type alias is created.

type stringOrNumber = string | number;

let pincode: stringOrNumber;

stringOrNumber is a type alias. It can be used with any variables that can contain either a string value or number value.

Question:

Here we have an interface Person.

interface Person {
  name: string;
  age: number;
}

We need to create a new interface Teacher that has 3 properties, name, age and subject. How to approach this issue?

Answer:

Teacher is a more specific version of Person. So, we can do this by extending Person interface.

interface Teacher extends Person {
  subject: string;
}

And later, we can use Teacher type while creating an object.

const obj: Teacher = {
  name: "John",
  age: 23,
  subject: "Science",
};

Question:

Here is a TypeScript code that creates a custom type.

type stringOrNumber = string | number;

Can we rewrite above line using interface?

Answer:

Interfaces can deal with JavaScript objects and its sub types. They cannot work with primitive data types. Therefore, we cannot convert this code using interface.

Question:

Here is a function written in TypeScript.

function sum(a: number, b: number): number {
  return a + b;
}

Please write down the interface for the above function.

Answer:

Here is the interface for the sum() function:

interface sum {
  (a: number, b: number): number;
}

Question:

We have a TypeScript file with only type definitions like below.

interface sum {
  (a: number, b: number): number;
}

interface show {
  (message: string): void;
}

Please write down the JavaScript code that is produced after TypeScript compilation.

Answer:

TypeScript performs static type checking. The interfaces and types in the TypeScript code is used by tsc compiler for static type checking. The output JavaScript file does not contain any type information. Therefore, in this case, the output JavaScript file will not contain any code.

Question:

We have a function type definition here created using interface.

interface show {
  (message: string): void;
}

Write the same definition using type keyword.

Answer:

Here is the type definition created using type keyword.

type show = (message: string) => void;