[Feature Request]: Typescript list of Events

[jdpaterson]

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a feature request that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Problem Description

Hi,

I am wondering if a similar issue or feature already exists. I am looking to create a Typescript type that accepts only valid electron events. For instance the BrowserWindow.on(event, listener) , I'm looking for a list of all of the valid events for .on. Something like

type AllBrowserWindowOnEvents = {
    'always-on-top-changed': (e: Event, isAlwaysOnTop: boolean) => void;
    'app-command: (e: Event, command: string) => void;
    ...and all of the other events, except I don't want to type them out
};

Does such a type already exist?

I tried things like:

type BrowserWindowOnEvents = Parameters<InstanceType<typeof Electron.BrowserWindow>['on']>[0];

but that only ever gives me Intellisense for the last BrowserWindow.on event, which is 'will-resize'.

It does work if I have new BrowserWindow().on(''), the intellisense will provide a list of all the possible events, but I'm looking to use it in a type definition when I don't have an instance of BrowserWindow.

Hope that makes sense, I would be willing to maybe put something together maybe for Electron-Userland but want to make sure nothing already exists.

Thanks

Proposed Solution

A type that lists all of the valid events for various listeners, ie

type AllBrowserWindowOnEvents = {
      'always-on-top-changed': (e: Event, isAlwaysOnTop: boolean) => void;
      'app-command: (e: Event, command: string) => void;
 }

Such a thing could be generated using the Typescript Compiler API

Alternatives Considered

Something that already exists that I'm missing.

Additional Information

No response

[vladimiry]

but that only ever gives me Intellisense for the last BrowserWindow.on event, which is 'will-resize'.

TS doesn't support overloaded function args inferring, see microsoft/TypeScript#26591 (closed with won't fix status).

Proposed Solution

I'd like this to happen to workaround the declined microsoft/TypeScript#26591 TS's issue as I also have a need to narrow/extract the event args typing. But as far as I know TS declarations of @electron get generated from the docs which is not the same as manual typing.

[MarshallOfSound]

Unfortunately due to how we generate our documentation we can either (a) leave things as they are which is great for intellisense and the way 99% of our users will consume the electron types or (b) change things to use generics and inference but in a way that let's TS code consume the event types as enums in a nice way.

Personally I don't see a good way of doing both and I think the obvious choice is to keep doing (a).

We publish electron-api.json with every release, if you want you can manually generate your own .d.ts file with custom enums / structs using that JSON api definition