typed-emitter

What is typed-emitter?

The 'typed-emitter' npm package provides a strongly-typed event emitter for TypeScript. It allows developers to define and use event emitters with type safety, ensuring that the events and their associated data are correctly typed.

What are typed-emitter's main functionalities?

Basic Event Emission

This feature allows you to define and emit basic events with type safety. The event 'event1' is defined to accept a string message, and the emitter ensures that only strings are passed when emitting this event.

const { TypedEmitter } = require('typed-emitter');

interface MyEvents {
  event1: (message: string) => void;
}

const emitter = new TypedEmitter<MyEvents>();
emitter.on('event1', (message) => {
  console.log(message);
});
emitter.emit('event1', 'Hello, World!');

Multiple Event Listeners

This feature demonstrates how you can attach multiple listeners to a single event. Both listeners will be called when 'event1' is emitted, and they will receive the same message.

const { TypedEmitter } = require('typed-emitter');

interface MyEvents {
  event1: (message: string) => void;
  event2: (count: number) => void;
}

const emitter = new TypedEmitter<MyEvents>();
emitter.on('event1', (message) => {
  console.log('Listener 1:', message);
});
emitter.on('event1', (message) => {
  console.log('Listener 2:', message);
});
emitter.emit('event1', 'Hello, World!');

Removing Event Listeners

This feature shows how to remove an event listener. The listener is first added to 'event1', then removed using the 'off' method. The second emission of 'event1' does not trigger the listener.

const { TypedEmitter } = require('typed-emitter');

interface MyEvents {
  event1: (message: string) => void;
}

const emitter = new TypedEmitter<MyEvents>();
const listener = (message: string) => {
  console.log(message);
};
emitter.on('event1', listener);
emitter.emit('event1', 'Hello, World!');
emitter.off('event1', listener);
emitter.emit('event1', 'This will not be logged');

Other packages similar to typed-emitter

eventemitter3

EventEmitter3 is a high-performance event emitter for Node.js and the browser. It provides a similar API to Node.js's built-in EventEmitter but with better performance and additional features. Unlike 'typed-emitter', it does not provide built-in TypeScript support, so type safety must be manually managed.

mitt

Mitt is a tiny (~200 bytes) functional event emitter. It is designed to be extremely lightweight and simple to use. While it is not as feature-rich as 'typed-emitter' and does not provide built-in TypeScript support, it is a good choice for projects where size and simplicity are critical.

nanoevents

Nanoevents is a tiny (around 200 bytes) event emitter library for JavaScript. It is similar to 'mitt' in its focus on minimalism and simplicity. Like 'mitt', it does not provide built-in TypeScript support, so type safety must be manually managed.

README

Typed-Emitter

Strictly typed event emitter interface for TypeScript.

Code size: Zero bytes - Just the typings, no implementation. Use the default event emitter of the events module in node.js or bring your favorite implementation when writing code for the browser.

Installation

$ npm install --save-dev typed-emitter

# Using yarn:
$ yarn add --dev typed-emitter

Usage

import EventEmitter from "events"
import TypedEmitter from "typed-emitter"

// Define your emitter's types like that:
// Key: Event name; Value: Listener function signature
interface MessageEvents {
  error: (error: Error) => void,
  message: (body: string, from: string) => void
}

const messageEmitter = new EventEmitter() as TypedEmitter<MessageEvents>

// Good 👍
messageEmitter.emit("message", "Hi there!", "[e-mail]")

// TypeScript will catch those mistakes ✋
messageEmitter.emit("mail", "Hi there!", "[e-mail]")
messageEmitter.emit("message", "Hi there!", true)

// Good 👍
messageEmitter.on("error", (error: Error) => { /* ... */ })

// TypeScript will catch those mistakes ✋
messageEmitter.on("error", (error: string) => { /* ... */ })
messageEmitter.on("failure", (error: Error) => { /* ... */ })

Extending an emitter

You might find yourself in a situation where you need to extend an event emitter, but also want to strictly type its events. Here is how to.

class MyEventEmitter extends (EventEmitter as new () => TypedEmitter<MyEvents>) {
  // ...
}

As a generic class:

class MyEventEmitter<T> extends (EventEmitter as { new<T>(): TypedEmitter<T> })<T> {
  // ...
}

RxJS fromEvent types inference

The default fromEvent from RxJS will return an Observable<unknown> for our typed emitter.

This can be fixed by the following code, by replacing the fromEvent type with our enhanced one: FromEvent:

import { fromEvent as rxFromEvent } from "rxjs"
import { FromEvent } from "typed-emitter/rxjs"

// The `Observable` typing can be correctly inferenced
const fromEvent = rxFromEvent as FromEvent

Learn more from rxjs fromEvent compatibility #9 for the fromEvent compatibility discussions.

Why another package?

The interface that comes with @types/node is not type-safe at all. It does not even offer a way of specifying the events that the emitter will emit...

The eventemitter3 package is a popular event emitter implementation that comes with TypeScript types out of the box. Unfortunately there is no way to declare the event arguments that the listeners have to expect.

There were a few other examples of type-safe event emitter interfaces out there as well. They were either not published to npm, had an inconsistent interface or other limitations.

License

MIT