Allow inference of class generics when declaring an interface

[zakhenry]

Search Terms

interface, inference, extending class

Suggestion

I'd like to be able to strongly type an interface such that when it is used on a class that has a generic I can infer the type of that generic to then use in the declaration of the interface.

Use Cases

I want to use this within a library that exposes both an abstract class and an optional interface that developers can opt-in to use. The abstract class has one generic parameter, and in order to correctly type the interface without duplicate generic declaration I want to be able to infer the abstract class' generic type.

Currently the inheriting class declarations must duplicate their generic type declaration.

This issue is similar to #26242 I think, but I don't see how the resolution of that issue will fix this one.

Examples

abstract class Base<T> {
    // implementation omitted for brevity
}

// ⬇️this is the proposed new syntax ⬇️
interface Remap<T> extends Base<infer U> {
    remap(input: U): T;
}

class Foo extends Base<string> implements Remap<number> {

    public remap(input: string): number {
        return input;
    }

}

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

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

[pocesar]

oh I just saw this issue, it's pretty similar with I just wrote there, the infer keyword at interface level instead of invocation level