TypeScript: Discriminated Unions & Polymorphism

Notes on picking between polymorphism and discriminated unions when writing typescript.

Discriminated Unions

https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/unions-and-intersections.html

// In TypeScript, discriminated unions are a union with a "discriminate".
// In the below example, "kind" is the discriminate.

export type Animal =
  | { kind: 'sheep' }
  | { kind: 'cat', breed: 'house' | 'wild' }
  | { kind: 'human', greeting: string }

export function speak(animal: Animal) {
  switch (animal.kind) {
		case 'cat':
      return animal.breed === 'domestic' ? 'meow' : 'ROAR';
    case 'sheep':
      return 'baa';
    case 'human':
      return animal.greeting;
    default
      assertNever(animal);
  }
}

• Simple use cases results in brief code
• Natural pattern is to switch in consuming code, which can become verbose when there is a large number of functions that access many variants.
• Callers of speak have full knowledge of the data in each animal.
• Caller of speak need to import the the type Animal, and the function separately.
• Logic for each variant lives alongside similar logic for other variants
• Naturally organizes functions near their consumers. Because of this:
  • speak is more likely it will get deleted when it is no longer used.
  • When code splitting, only required functions are be included ¹
• Because Animal doesn't control its own data, we likely won't be organizing many tests around Animal. Instead, many test will be against individual functions, or against callers of those functions.

Possible file layout

Polymorphism

https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/interfaces.html

// Could also be a class
interface Animal {
  speak(): string;
}

class Sheep implements Animal {
  speak() {
    return 'baa';
  }
}

function createCat(breed: 'house' | 'wild'): Animal {
	return {
		breed,
    speak() {
      return this.breed === 'house' ? 'meow' : 'ROAR';
    }
  };
}

class Human implements Animal {
	constructor(
    private greeting: string;
  ) {};
  speak() {
    return this.greeting;
  }
}

• Scales cleanly to large numbers of variants
• Callers of speak only need to import Animal, or nothing at all.
• Information is hidden from callers of speak.
• Animal related logic can be more easily be stubbed out when testing other code.
• Logic for each variant lives alongside that variants definition
• Naturally organisms logic near type definitions. Because of this:
  • Tests naturally become written around Animal, and its functions.
  • Harder to delete/detect unused code
  • When code splitting, more unused methods will be included in bundles ¹
• Allows for easy dependency injection

Possible file layout

Polymorphic Discriminated Unions

interface IAnimal {
	kind: string;
  speak(): string;
}

class Sheep implements Animal {
	kind = 'sheep' as const;
  speak() {
    return 'baa';
  }
}

interface Cat extends IAnimal {
  kind: 'cat';
  breed: 'house' | 'wild';
}

function createCat(breed: Cat['breed']): Cat {
	return {
    kind: 'cat';
		breed,
    speak() {
      return this.breed === 'house' ? 'meow' : 'ROAR';
    }
  };
}

class Human implements Animal {
  kind: 'human' as const;
	constructor(
    private greeting: string;
  ) {};
  speak() {
    return this.greeting;
  }
}

export type Animal = Sheep | Cat | Human;

• Well suited for cases were most logic should live near the type definitions, but we need to get access to concrete data outside of the definitions occasionally.
• Most complex. Easiest to make a mess of things with.

Notes

• Both patterns work fine with both mutable and functional styles. Don't sleep on using classes just because you're writing functionally.