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Caution

THIS LIBRARY IS CURRENTLY PRE-RELEASE

pkl-typescript is currently major version v0, and breaking changes will happen between versions.

Please read the section Roadmap below to learn more.

Pkl Bindings for TypeScript

This library exposes TypeScript language bindings for the Pkl configuration language.

These language bindings are made up of:

  • an "evaluator", that can execute Pkl code and deserialise the result into JavaScript runtime objects
  • the pkl-gen-typescript CLI, that can analyse a Pkl schema and generate matching TypeScript definitions

Together, this allows you to embed Pkl into your TypeScript application, complete with code generation for full type safety and ease of use.

Getting Started

First, install pkl-typescript from NPM:

npm install @pkl-community/pkl-typescript

Then, generate a TypeScript file from your Pkl schema (eg. for a file called "config.pkl"):

npx pkl-gen-typescript config.pkl -o ./generated

Lastly, in your TypeScript code, you can import the generated types and loader code:

import { type Config, loadFromPath } from "./generated/config.pkl.ts";

const config: Config = await loadFromPath("config.pkl");

See more example usage in the examples directory.

Note on Schemas vs. Configs

pkl-gen-typescript generates a TypeScript file based on Pkl's type information only, not Pkl's runtime values. For example, a Pkl file with x: String = "hello" would produce the TypeScript type x: string.
Conversely, the evaluator (used by the loadFromPath(string) function) evaluates a Pkl module that renders values.

You may choose to have your Pkl schemas and values defined in separate Pkl files (eg. schema.pkl and config.pkl, where config.pkl starts with amends "schema.pkl"). In such a case, you would pass schema.pkl to pkl-gen-typescript, but then evaluate config.pkl at runtime (ie. await loadFromPath("config.pkl")).

Roadmap

This library is currently in pre-release: we believe it is usable and productive in its current state, but not feature-complete, and not yet API-stable.

We will keep the major version at v0 until we are ready to commit to stability in:

  • the evaluator API (as provided by the @pkl-community/pkl-typescript NPM package)
  • the TypeScript type definitions generated by pkl-gen-typescript

Until then, minor and patch releases may contain breaking changes.

Warning

We strongly recommend you regenerate your generated TypeScript code (with pkl-gen-typescript) every time you upgrade @pkl-community/pkl-typescript. If you don't, you may end up with unexpected runtime errors from type mismatches.

Known Current Limitations

  • Inlined imports: Imported Pkl types are inlined into the output TypeScript file. For example, if foo.pkl has an import like import "bar.pkl", and you run pkl-gen-typescript foo.pkl, the resulting foo.pkl.ts file will include all types defined in foo.pkl as well as all types defined in bar.pkl. This means that the resulting TypeScript generated files (in a multi-file codegen) will match the set of input root files, not the file structure of the source Pkl files. This behaviour may create unintended name conflicts; these can be resolved using the @typescript.Name { value = "..." } annotation. It may also cause duplication (eg. if the same shared Pkl library file is imported in two schemas); TypeScript's structural typing (where equivalent type shapes can be used interchangeably) should mean that any duplicate types can be safely used as each other.
  • Subclass type overrides: Pkl class definitions are generated as TypeScript interfaces in code generation; Pkl supports completely changing the type of a property in a child class, but this is not allowed in TypeScript extending interfaces. When a TypeScript interface extends a parent interface, overrides of the type of a property must be "compatible" with the parent type (eg. overriding a string type with a string-literal type). TypeScript codegen currently has support for a few compatible types, and others may be allowed in the future (if you have an example of a compatible type that should work but fails in codegen, please file a GitHub Issue).
  • Regex deserialisation: Pkl's Regex type will be decoded as a pklTypescript.Regex object, which contains a .pattern property. Pkl uses Java's regular expression syntax, which may not always be perfectly compatible with JavaScript's regular expression syntax. If you want to use your Pkl Regex as a JavaScript RegExp, and you are confident that the expression will behave the same way in JavaScript as in Pkl, you can instantiate a new RegExp using the pklTypescript.Regex.pattern property, eg. const myConfigRegexp = new RegExp(myConfig.someRegex.pattern).
  • IntSeq deserialisation: Pkl's IntSeq type is intended to be used internally within a Pkl program to create a range loop. It is unlikely to be useful as a property type in JavaScript, and is therefore decoded into a custom pklTypescript.IntSeq type with signature { start: number; end: number: step: number } - it is not decoded into an array containing the ranged values. If you have a use-case to use IntSeq as an array of ranged values in a TypeScript program, please file a GitHub Issue.
  • Duration and DataSize APIs: Pkl has a rich API for many of its custom types, but two of note (that are not common in standard libraries of other languages) are Duration and DataSize, which include convenience APIs for eg. converting between units or summing values. These types are decoded into pklTypescript.DataSize/pklTypescript.Duration types (each of which have a value and unit property), and do not yet have the convenience APIs from Pkl.

Appendix

Pkl Binary Version

This package has a peer dependency on @pkl-community/pkl, to ensure a Pkl binary is installed. You can use an alternative Pkl binary (for either the evaluator or codegen) by setting the environment variable PKL_EXEC with the path to a Pkl binary.

Type Mappings

When code-generating TypeScript type definitions from Pkl schemas, each Pkl type is converted to an associated TypeScript type, as per the table below. While in pre-release, these mappings are subject to change!

Pkl type TypeScript type
Null null
Boolean boolean
String string
Int number
Int8 number
Int16 number
Int32 number
UInt number
UInt8 number
UInt16 number
UInt32 number
Float number
Number number
List Array<T>
Listing Array<T>
Map<K, V> Map<K, V>
Mapping<K, V> Map<K, V>
Set Set<T>
Pair<A, B> pklTypescript.Pair<A, B>
Dynamic pklTypescript.Dynamic
DataSize pklTypescript.DataSize
Duration pklTypescript.Duration
IntSeq pklTypescript.IntSeq
Class interface
TypeAlias typealias
Any pklTypescript.Any
Unions (A|B|C) A|B|C
Regex pklTypescript.Regex