{"id":420,"date":"2023-02-06T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/?p=420"},"modified":"2023-02-01T15:22:12","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T23:22:12","slug":"typescript-any-vs-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/typescript-any-vs-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"TypeScript: any vs. unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TypeScript has some abstract types that can be helpful in Angular applications. Most people have encountered the type any<\/a><\/code> at some point, and it has become a typical anti-pattern in several projects where developers decided: “I don’t want to bother using proper types for this object, so I’ll use any<\/code>“<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is why any<\/code> is dangerous and not recommended:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, if we replace any<\/code> with unknown<\/a><\/code>, things look different:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can see, unknown<\/code> preserves type safety. If we receive an object from a third-party library and need to pass it around to another function, unknown<\/code> is perfect for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to think about unknown<\/code> is: We have this object that we don’t know what’s inside, so we won’t allow touching it; we’ll store it or pass it around<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can’t think of good reasons why we would need to use any in Angular code at this point. Using any<\/code> is refusing to use TypeScript properly and falling back to untyped JavaScript. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the next few days, we’ll cover different techniques and tools we can use to create accurate type information so we don’t need any<\/code> or unknown<\/code> anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TypeScript has some abstract types that can be helpful in Angular applications. Most people have encountered the type any at some point, and it has become a typical anti-pattern in several projects where developers decided: “I don’t want to bother using proper types for this object, so I’ll use any“. Here is why any is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-typescript"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angulartraining.com\/daily-newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}