[Feature] Utility type for T[keyof T] or new keyword valueof

[ivoiv]

Search Terms

typeof keyof utlity type

Suggestion

Alternative 1:
Create a new Utility type expressing T[keyof T]
Example Value<T> = T[keyof T].

Alternative 2:
Create a new keyword equivalent to T[keyof T]
Example valueof T = T[keyof T]

Use Cases

While T[keyof T] is short and concise, from my experience a lot of developers new to TypeScript usually have no idea what this means or why it's written like that when they first see it.
I also feel that it's not as easy to Google a the answer to that, in comparison to established utility and advanced types like Pick, Omit, Record, etc. which all have their own entries in the TS documentation.

Additionally Object.keys and Object.values are similar concepts.
The presence of a keyof keyword would suggest a valueof should also exist, yet it's missing and one must employ a "special" approach to replicate.

A simple solution is to write my own custom type for the project, but that just introduces additional abstraction and the knowledge/practice isn't transferable to other projects, without implementing the same custom type somewhere in the code first.

And lastly, and this is not a big issue, but I feel it's redundant having to write the type for T twice in on the same line just a few symbols apart.
With short names such as T it's okay, but with longer type names the code becomes more cumbersome to read.

Examples

type T = {
    a: string;
    b: number
    c: number[]
    ...etc
}

// Value<T> = string | number | number[]...
// valueof T = string | number | number[]...

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

• This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
• This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, etc.)
• This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.
  Perhaps some conflict on point 8...

[devinrhode2]

I wonder why valueof wasn't introduced at the same time as keyof?

[JoshuaKGoldberg]

To add to the reasons & voices in favor: a valueof keyword or similar would be quite useful with getting enum-like behavior with const objects.

Today, if you'd like to grab the value out of a const object, you have to use something akin to (typeof MyObject)[keyof typeof MyObject]:

const StatusCodes = {
    InternalServerError: 500,
    NotFound: 404,
    Ok: 200,
    // ...
} as const;

// Type: 200 | 400 | 500
type StatusCodeValue = (typeof StatusCodes)[keyof typeof StatusCodes];

let statusCodeValue: StatusCodeValue;

statusCodeValue = 200; // Ok

statusCodeValue = -1;
// Error: Type '-1' is not assignable to type 'StatusCodeValue'.

A valueof syntax would be much cleaner:

// Type: 200 | 400 | 500
type StatusCodeValue = valueof typeof StatusCodes;

[WillsterJohnson]

valueof as a keyword makes so much sense, I feel like having a keyword in line with Object.values is a logical progression from keyof being in line with Object.keys.

In fact, why don't we have some more keywords for some of the most used ObjectConstructor methods?

// these exist

Object.keys(obj) -> keyof typeof obj

// this one uses the utility type `Readonly<T>` rather than `readonly T`, close enough
Object.freeze(obj) -> readonly typeof obj

// this feature request

Object.values(obj) -> valueof typeof obj
// provides "v1" | "v2"
type ValueOf<T> = T[keyof T];

// possibly more?

Object.entries(obj) -> entryof typeof obj
// provides ["k1" | "k2", "v1" | "v2"] (not ideal: allows ["k1", "v2"] which is not a valid entry)
type EntryOf<T> = [keyof T, valueof T];
// provides ["k1", "v1"] | ["k2", "v2"] (preferred: associates 1:1 key:value) (hard to read as a util - doesn't matter as a keyword)
type EntryOf<T> = valueof { [K in keyof T]: [K, T[K]] };
// note that these won't be too different in length of generated type for reasonably sized objects

(I should note that I'm not asking for the definitions on ObjectConstructor to be changed to reflect the listed types, I'm simply listing the similar keywords. I believe definition changes have already been discussed elsewhere, plus they're off-topic here so let's leave it at that.)

In all honesty, I went through every method under interface ObjectConstructor { ... } and entries was the only other one that seems reasonable.
(Drifting off-topic slightly) Trying to think of other keywords, I can see that the useful ones I've been able to think of have their respective issues. (if you're interested, I found these: writable, public-ify, nameof)

It's common to cast Object.keys(obj) as keyof typeof obj, or do the same for values and entries, having a way to do so more easily for the latter two would be helpful for everyone who's casting the outputs, and it wouldn't involve changing the type definitions.