Serialized Model Type for front-end TypeScript usage

[guoyunhe]

Model in front-end and back-end are different:

// Back-end
class User extends BaseModel {
  @column({ isPrimary: true })
  declare id: number;

  @column({ serializeAs: null })
  declare email: string;

  @column({ serializeAs: null })
  declare password: string;

  @column.dateTime({ autoCreate: true })
  declare createdAt: DateTime;

  @column.dateTime({ autoCreate: true, autoUpdate: true })
  declare updatedAt: DateTime | null;
}

Since some property are serialized to different types, the model type in front-end has to be:

// Front-end
interface User {
  id: number;
  email: null;
  password: null;
  createdAt: string;
  updatedAt: string | null;
}

Currently we have write User model type twice: one for back-end, one for front-end.

If we can have some sort of TypeScript utility extract serialized model types:

import type User from '#models/user';

type SerializedUser = SerializeModel<User>;

That will save a lot of efforts.

[RomainLanz]

Hey! 👋🏻

Thanks for the feedback!

AdonisJS 7 significantly improves end-to-end type safety across the HTTP layer. A lot of work has gone into making request and response types more reliable, reducing duplication between backend and frontend, and enabling truly type-safe clients.

So while this can feel limiting today, this is largely addressed in v7, which is coming very soon.