Nested types inlined instead of referencing

[schibrikov]

When some type refers to other type like

interface MySecondInterface {
	field: MyFirstInterface;
}

ts-to-io inlines all the fields of MyFirstInterface just like

const MySecondInterface = t.type({
	field: t.type({
		property: t.number
	});
})

Instead, I'd like to see

const MySecondInterface = t.type({
	field: MyFirstInterface // generated io-ts type name
})

Is it a goal for this project?

[plumdog]

I found this behaviour surprising too. I would expect anything that could refer to another type to reference that type, rather than being replicated.

I can't see an obvious way to alter this behaviour in the code.

[raine]

👍 This would be great

[juusaw]

Hi, I would also prefer this to be the behavior and definitely see it as an improvement to the project. I will try to into it more at some point but so far my impression is that this would be difficult to achieve with the TS compiler API – although I may be wrong about this. The API documentation is somewhat incomplete so a bit of exploration into the internals would likely be needed to see if this would be possible and how much work it would take.

This change would also enable support for recursive types which would be a nice improvement.

[ahrjarrett]

I vote we add a feature-request label to this issue. I agree this would be awesome. Is @juusaw still able and interested in this package?

If so, I think seeing that there are goals and areas we might need help would make the issues page look less like a list of things that are broken, and more like a kind of roadmap.

Personally I think this library is the ticket I need to overcome objections to introducing fp-ts in production at work. io-ts is a wonderful library, but I feel like ts-to-io is the missing piece of the story.

FP can be a hardsell and loses a lot of battles without having a chance to demonstrate its usefulness; this could be the gateway drug that gets a skeptical team curious enough to give it a shot.