Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most.

Learn more about Collectives

Teams

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Learn more about Teams

I want to be able to assign an object property to a value given a key and value as inputs yet still be able to determine the type of the value. It's a bit hard to explain so this code should reveal the problem:

type JWT = { id: string, token: string, expire: Date };
const obj: JWT = { id: 'abc123', token: 'tk01', expire: new Date(2018, 2, 14) };
function print(key: keyof JWT) {
    switch (key) {
        case 'id':
        case 'token':
            console.log(obj[key].toUpperCase());
            break;
        case 'expire':
            console.log(obj[key].toISOString());
            break;
function onChange(key: keyof JWT, value: any) {
    switch (key) {
        case 'id':
        case 'token':
            obj[key] = value + ' (assigned)';
            break;
        case 'expire':
            obj[key] = value;
            break;
print('id');
print('expire');
onChange('id', 'def456');
onChange('expire', new Date(2018, 3, 14));
print('id');
print('expire');
onChange('expire', 1337); // should fail here at compile time
print('expire'); // actually fails here at run time

I tried changing value: any to value: valueof JWT but that didn't work.

Ideally, onChange('expire', 1337) would fail because 1337 is not a Date type.

How can I change value: any to be the value of the given key?

The package type-fest (github.com/sindresorhus/type-fest) has the type ValueOf, as well as many other exceedingly useful utility types - I use it all the time, and would highly recommend it. – Geoff Davids Jul 8, 2021 at 8:42

UPDATE: Looks like the question title attracts people looking for a union of all possible property value types, analogous to the way keyof gives you the union of all possible property key types. Let's help those people first. You can make a ValueOf analogous to keyof, by using indexed access types with keyof T as the key, like so:

type ValueOf<T> = T[keyof T];

which gives you

type Foo = { a: string, b: number };
type ValueOfFoo = ValueOf<Foo>; // string | number

For the question as stated, you can use individual keys, narrower than keyof T, to extract just the value type you care about:

type sameAsString = Foo['a']; // look up a in Foo
type sameAsNumber = Foo['b']; // look up b in Foo

In order to make sure that the key/value pair "match up" properly in a function, you should use generics as well as indexed access types, like this:

declare function onChange<K extends keyof JWT>(key: K, value: JWT[K]): void; 
onChange('id', 'def456'); // okay
onChange('expire', new Date(2018, 3, 14)); // okay
onChange('expire', 1337); // error. 1337 not assignable to Date

The idea is that the key parameter allows the compiler to infer the generic K parameter. Then it requires that value matches JWT[K], the indexed access type you need.

Ran into a problem using a string-valued enum with function members. To handle this well, you can use type StringValueOf<T> = T[keyof T] & string;. The best docs I found on string enums are the TypeScript 2.9 release notes – karmakaze Aug 19, 2019 at 1:46 Another construct I've found useful is Required<T>[keyof T], which represents the values you can get from t[k] when t: T and k in t. – jsalvata Sep 30, 2021 at 12:03 @markokraljevic the answer is perfectly valid. You can't assign types as object values as Typescript types (non-primitive types) do not exist at runtime. This solution is for creating types that can be more than one type and unify it all in one instead of copy/pasting long lists of types (string | boolean | MyType). – José Manuel Blasco Feb 3, 2022 at 9:56 Don't forget to add as const to the end of the object in question if you are just getting generic string types out of this. – Bret Jan 26 at 22:30

There is another way to extract the union type of the object:

  const myObj = { a: 1, b: 'some_string' } as const;
  type values = typeof myObj[keyof typeof myObj];

Result: 1 | "some_string"

This const thing is very valuable, TypeScript will actually provide the values themselves and remove duplicates; It's very good for dictionaries. – John May 7, 2020 at 22:35 This helped me. If dealing with an enum as a type, this can be written type MyEnum = { A: 1, B: 'some_string' }; type values = MyEnum[keyof MyEnum]; – MarkMYoung May 5, 2022 at 20:51 Without as const this doesn't work. It only returns the type of the value (not the actual value) DON'T forget it. – Claudiu Oct 26, 2022 at 14:51

If anyone still looks for implementation of valueof for any purposes, this is a one I came up with:

type valueof<T> = T[keyof T]

Usage:

type actions = {
    type: 'Reset'
    data: number
    type: 'Apply'
    data: string
type actionValues = valueof<actions>

Works as expected :) Returns an Union of all possible types

With the function below you can limit the value to be the one for that particular key.

function setAttribute<T extends Object, U extends keyof T>(obj: T, key: U, value: T[U]) {
    obj[key] = value;

Example

interface Pet {
     name: string;
     age: number;
const dog: Pet = { name: 'firulais', age: 8 };
setAttribute(dog, 'name', 'peluche')     <-- Works
setAttribute(dog, 'name', 100)           <-- Error (number is not string)
setAttribute(dog, 'age', 2)              <-- Works
setAttribute(dog, 'lastname', '')        <-- Error (lastname is not a property)
// type TEST1 = boolean | 42 | "heyhey"
type TEST1 = ValueOf<{ foo: 42, sort: 'heyhey', bool: boolean }>
// type TEST2 = 1 | 4 | 9 | "zzz..."
type TEST2 = ValueOf<[1, 4, 9, 'zzz...']>
                works only with ReadonlyArray:  type ValueOf<T> = T extends ReadonlyArray<any> ? T[number] : T[keyof T];. See github.com/piotrwitek/utility-types#valuestypet source
– Bohdan Lyzanets
                Sep 5, 2020 at 16:01

You can made a Generic for your self to get the types of values, BUT, please consider the declaration of object should be declared as const, like:

export const APP_ENTITIES = {
  person: 'PERSON',
  page: 'PAGE',
} as const; <--- this `as const` I meant

Then the below generic will work properly:

export type ValueOf<T> = T[keyof T];

Now use it like below:

const entity: ValueOf<typeof APP_ENTITIES> = 'P...'; // ... means typing
   // it refers 'PAGE' and 'PERSON' to you

Thanks the existing answers which solve the problem perfectly. Just wanted to add up a lib has included this utility type, if you prefer to import this common one.

https://github.com/piotrwitek/utility-types#valuestypet

import { ValuesType } from 'utility-types';
type Props = { name: string; age: number; visible: boolean };
// Expect: string | number | boolean
type PropsValues = ValuesType<Props>;
                This is the best answer because this answers handles array too. Other answers don't as lots of property on arrays reflect otherwise
– bugwheels94
                Apr 11, 2022 at 0:53

You could use help of generics to define T that is a key of JWT and value to be of type JWT[T]

function onChange<T extends keyof JWT>(key: T, value: JWT[T]);

the only problem here is in the implementation that following obj[key] = value + ' (assigned)'; will not work because it will try to assign string to string & Date. The fix here is to change index from key to token so compiler knows that the target variable type is string.

Another way to fix the issue is to use Type Guard

// IF we have such a guard defined
function isId(input: string): input is 'id' {
  if(input === 'id') {
    return true;
  return false;
// THEN we could do an assignment in "if" block
// instead of switch and compiler knows obj[key] 
// expects string value
if(isId(key)) {
  obj[key] = value + ' (assigned)';

with type-fest lib, you can do that with ValueOf like that:

import type { ValueOf } from 'type-fest';
export const PATH_NAMES = {
  home: '/',
  users: '/users',
  login: '/login',
  signup: '/signup',
interface IMenu {
  id: ValueOf<typeof PATH_NAMES>;
  label: string;
  onClick: () => void;
  icon: ReactNode;
  const menus: IMenu[] = [
      id: PATH_NAMES.home,
      label: t('common:home'),
      onClick: () => dispatch(showHome()),
      icon: <GroupIcon />,
      id: PATH_NAMES.users,
      label: t('user:users'),
      onClick: () => dispatch(showUsers()),
      icon: <GroupIcon />,

I realize this is slightly off topic, That said every time I've looked for a solution to this. I get sent to this post. So for those of you looking for String Literal Type generator, here you go.

This will create a string Literal list from an object type.

export type StringLiteralList<T, K extends keyof T> = T[keyof Pick<T, K>];
type DogNameType = { name: "Bob", breed: "Boxer" } | { name: "Pepper", breed: "Spaniel" } | { name: "Polly", breed: "Spaniel" };
export type DogNames = StringLiteralList<DogNameType, "name">;
// type DogNames = "Bob" | "Pepper" | "Polly";
        

Thanks for contributing an answer to Stack Overflow!

  • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

But avoid

  • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.
  • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.

To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.