TypeScript and React: Events

Web apps are really boring if you don’t interact with them. Events are key, and TypeScript’s React typings have great support for them.

In this section:

• Basic Event Handling
• Restrictive Event Handling
• Where’s InputEvent?

Basic Event Handling #

React uses its own event system. That’s why you can’t use typical MouseEvents or similar on your elements. You need to use the specific React version, otherwise you get a compile error.

Luckily, React typings give you the proper equivalent of each event you might be familiar with from standard DOM. They even have the same name, which can be tricky at times. You either need to be specific with e.g. React.MouseEvent or import the MouseEvent typing right from the React module:

import React, { Component, MouseEvent } from 'react';

export class Button extends Component {
  handleClick(event: MouseEvent) {
    event.preventDefault();
    alert(event.currentTarget.tagName); // alerts BUTTON
  }
  
  render() {
    return <button onClick={this.handleClick}>
      {this.props.children}
    </button>
  }
}

Events supported are: AnimationEvent, ChangeEvent, ClipboardEvent, CompositionEvent, DragEvent, FocusEvent, FormEvent, KeyboardEvent, MouseEvent, PointerEvent, TouchEvent, TransitionEvent, WheelEvent. As well as SyntheticEvent, for all other events.

Restrictive Event Handling #

If you want to restrict your event handlers to specific elements, you can use a generic to be more specific:

import React, { Component, MouseEvent } from 'react';

export class Button extends Component {
  /*
   Here we restrict all handleClicks to be exclusively on 
   HTMLButton Elements
  */
  handleClick(event: MouseEvent<HTMLButtonElement>) {
    event.preventDefault();
    alert(event.currentTarget.tagName); // alerts BUTTON
  }

  /* 
    Generics support union types. This event handler works on
    HTMLButtonElement and HTMLAnchorElement (links).
  */
  handleAnotherClick(event: MouseEvent<HTMLButtonElement | HTMLAnchorElement>) {
    event.preventDefault();
    alert('Yeah!');
  }

  render() {
    return <button onClick={this.handleClick}>
      {this.props.children}
    </button>
  }
}

All HTML element type definitions are in the default DOM typings of TypeScript. Don’t forget to add the library dom (see getting started).

Where’s InputEvent? #

If you come from Flow you will notice that InputEvent (SyntheticInputEvent respectively) is not supported by TypeScript typings. This is mainly because InputEvent is still an experimental interface and not fully supported by all browsers. If you use the onInput property from all input elements, you will see that the interface for onInput uses any for the event interface. This will change in the future.

To be a bit more specific in your code you can import SyntheticEvent from the React typings.

import React, { Component, SyntheticEvent } from 'react';

export class Input extends Component {

  handleInput(event: SyntheticEvent) {
    event.preventDefault();
    // ...
  }

  render() {
    return <>
      <input type="text" onInput={this.handleInput}/>
    </>
  }
}

Now you get at least some type safety.