Zod === TypeScript, but at Runtime in Your React Applications

Many Javascript developers have added typescript to their projects in the last few years. But how many of them are sure of their types at runtime? Can types be guaranteed on runtime too?


Using Zod that can be realized! Let's see together how we can use Zod to improve the awareness of our code during its execution and prevent strange mistakes or a bad user experience.

This talk has been presented at React Advanced 2023, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

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FAQ

Zod integrates with TypeScript through the 'typeof' method, which allows developers to convert Zod schemas into TypeScript types. This enables maintaining type safety in the codebase while also providing runtime validation, ensuring that both compile-time and runtime data structures are consistent.

If the data does not match the Zod schema, the 'parse' function of Zod will throw an exception, highlighting the discrepancies. Developers need to handle this exception appropriately to manage data validation errors and ensure the application can respond to data inconsistencies effectively.

Yes, Zod can be used to validate URL parameters in React applications. For example, by creating a custom schema for URL parameters and using it with React Router's useParams hook, developers can ensure that parameters like IDs match the expected formats and types, enhancing type safety and reliability.

Zod enhances security and reliability by providing a robust validation layer that checks incoming data against predefined schemas. This helps prevent issues related to unexpected or malicious data, ensuring that only valid and expected data is processed by the application.

The benefits of using Zod include ensuring data integrity by validating data against schemas at runtime, reducing bugs related to data handling, and improving the application's stability and security by catching data-related errors before they affect the application's operations.

Zod is a simple NPM package that can be installed in your React application to create a validation layer. It uses schema objects to describe and validate data structures, ensuring that the data matches the expected format during runtime, especially when interacting with external APIs or data sources.

Luca Del Puppo
Luca Del Puppo
20 min
23 Oct, 2023

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Video Summary and Transcription
Zotter is a powerful tool for working with TypeScript in React applications, providing a simple schema concept for validation. It allows you to convert Zod schemas into TypeScript types and check if objects match the schema. Zod can be used for validation and contract enforcement, ensuring data consistency and preventing issues. It can also be used in React applications to create a validation layer and prevent code from running with incorrect data. The speaker encourages questions and provides contact information for further discussion.

1. Introduction to Zotter and TypeScript in React

Short description:

Hello everybody, and welcome to this talk about Zotter and TypeScript in your React application. Almost a year ago, TypeScript was born. We started to create interfaces to map our model. In our project everything was perfect. Until a day, a backend developer decided to change the API. The superhero is Zod. Zod is a simple NPM package that you can install in your React application. It has a simple concept, the schema concept.

Hello everybody, and welcome to this talk about Zotter and TypeScript in your React application. So, I want to start with a story. So, almost a year ago, TypeScript was born. And every developer, JavaScript developer in the world probably was happy. So, we started to create interfaces to map our model. So, we start to use numbers, string, Boolean and so on. Or maybe types, depending on the scenario you can use interface or types. Whatever you prefer, it's not a problem.

And in our project everything was perfect. We had all the types perfect in our code base. And it was a perfect work for us. Until a day, a backend developer decided to change the API. And unfortunately, he or she decided to change the signature of the API. The result in our React application is something like this. Not a number, not a snippet string, or all the kind of strange JavaScript error that you can image in your React application. These are because yes, Tileset is fantastic. I love it. But after the transpilation, you lose all the types and the code becomes JavaScript code, because in your browser, run only JavaScript code and not tileset code. Sometimes developers forget this stuff and they don't realize this until in production, they don't receive this kind of error.

So, how we can solve this problem in our React or JavaScript or Tilescript applications? So, the superhero is Zod. What is Zod, first of all? Zod is a simple NPM package that you can install in your React application, in your project, using your Package Manager. You can use NPM, install, Zod, and everything is ready to use. Zod has a simple concept, the schema concept. The schema is an object, a real JavaScript object in this case, as you can notice, that describes your object. In this case, a customer schema is a Zod schema that describe that the customer is an object with four properties, the ID, with the type of number, the name with the type string, the email with the type string again, and the same for the phone. You can also add different constraints. For instance, the string can accept also a constraint that this is an email, the phone is a phone and so on. Or you can also build if you want your custom type. For instance, you want a specific case to describe, you can do this. But you can also, for instance, create a num, literal type, whatever you want.

2. Using Zod with TypeScript

Short description:

The syntax of Zod is similar to TypeScript, making it easy to learn. By using the typeof method, you can convert your Zod schema into a TypeScript type. This allows you to work with TypeScript while maintaining the schema definition at runtime.

As you can notice, the syntax is pretty similar to the TypeScript syntax. So it's not difficult to learn Zod in this case. And you can import and use it using the Zed object in this case, that you can import direct from the Zod library.

Then, yes, in this case, in this moment, Zod has a schema. And now, we have to use it. But it's important to remember that this is a const or let, whatever you prefer, but it's a JavaScript schema. So this schema rest alive also in production, also during the execution of your code. Still alive also in production.

Okay, perfect. But I lose the benefit of using TypeScript, you are thinking, probably. No, because using a simple method called typeof, exposed by the third library, you can convert your schema in a TypeScript type. So in this case, using the typeof, we can convert the customer schema in a customer model using a simple line of code, pretty simple. And using this approach, now we have a TypeScript type, so the customer model, and also the customer schema. So, we have the stuff to work in the best way with the TypeScript, but also something that we can use in our code to maintain and keep alive this definition also at runtime.

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