Autocomplete Filepath Strings.

[Griffork]

Search Terms

Autocomplete, fs, require, strings.

Suggestion

I would like to be able to mark a string as a relative path, and get autocomplete for it if it's initialised with a constant.

Examples

var path: tsRelativePath;
path = "./fi 
//pressing ctrl-space should autocomplete to ./file or ./file.txt.

fs.readFile("./fi 
//pressing ctrl-space should autocomplete to ./file or ./file.txt.

Obviously some name for the type that doesn't conflict with common type names will have to be chosen.

Use Cases

It would be nice to have autocomplete for fs.read etc.

I'm making a modified require.js library which allows me to use a custom import function on the client to load resources (html templates, css, 3D models, animations, shaders, etc.) relative to the current script file. I'd like to be able to get auto-complete on the paths and compiler errors if the resource doesn't exist (e.g. i forgot to build my scss files).

I would also like these paths to update when you move or rename a resource the same way paths update when you move or rename a script file.

I'm aware this functionality can be enabled in VSCode with plugins but I'm stuck using Visual Studio and would like it to be supported natively.

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

• [ y] This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code (as long as the type name is chosen well)
• [ y] This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• [ y] This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• [ y] This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, etc.)
• [ y] This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.

[mdbetancourt]

@RyanCavanaugh i want to see this too maybe as

function loadFile(filePath: FilePath) {}
// or allow this so there is not posibility with name collision with existing types
function loadFile(filePath: Parameters<typeof import>[0]) {}

loadFile('./|')
          // ^ ctrl + space return files autocomplete

same behavior as import

const mod = await import('./|')
                        // ^ ctrl + space return files autocomplete

[oliveryasuna]

This would be great for IDE auto-completion.

[xiBread]

There's a VSCode extension that does this. I don't see the point in having TS supporting this natively.

[oliveryasuna]

There's a VSCode extension that does this. I don't see the point in having TS supporting this natively.

Not everyone is unfortunate enough to use VSCode.

[BeatsuDev]

I would love this feature, but I don't see it being implemented in the near future - if ever. TypeScript types describe an outer bound of the set of all possible values or structures a variable can have during runtime. TypeScript can't make an assertion like this about a file path variable at build time, unless it acts as a bundler or packager and includes external file dependencies to the fully built artifact.

In essence, this problem is exactly the same as fetching data from APIs, and a common solution there (apart from validating responses at runtime) is to pre-generate the response types and "dangerously" assert responses with as Type.

The closest solution I can think of that can apply to your project @Griffork would be to create a complementary cli tool that can dynamically generate types - kind of like how Microsoft's kiota generates API clients. The CLI tool could include a postinstall script to automatically generate the types when it's added as a dependency - though personally I would have preferred to explicitly do this myself and have it stated in the docs.