Question

I want to achieve something like this:

class TestClass {
    someMethod(stringParameter: string): void {
        alert("Variant #1: stringParameter = " + stringParameter);
    }
    
    someMethod(numberParameter: number, stringParameter: string): void {
        alert("Variant #2: numberParameter = " + numberParameter + ", stringParameter = " + stringParameter);
    }
}

var testClass = new TestClass();
testClass.someMethod("string for v#1");
testClass.someMethod(12345, "string for v#2");

Here is an example of what I don’t want to do (I really hate that part of overloading hack in JS):

class TestClass {
    private someMethod_Overload_string(stringParameter: string): void {
        // A lot of code could be here... I don't want to mix it with switch or if statement in general function
        alert("Variant #1: stringParameter = " + stringParameter);
    }
    
    private someMethod_Overload_number_string(numberParameter: number, stringParameter: string): void {
        alert("Variant #2: numberParameter = " + numberParameter + ", stringParameter = " + stringParameter);
    }
    
    private someMethod_Overload_string_number(stringParameter: string, numberParameter: number): void {
        alert("Variant #3: stringParameter = " + stringParameter + ", numberParameter = " + numberParameter);
    }
    
    public someMethod(stringParameter: string): void;
    public someMethod(numberParameter: number, stringParameter: string): void;
    public someMethod(stringParameter: string, numberParameter: number): void;

    public someMethod(): void {
        switch (arguments.length) {
        case 1:
            if(typeof arguments[0] == "string") {
                this.someMethod_Overload_string(arguments[0]);
                return;
            }
            return; // Unreachable area for this case, unnecessary return statement
        case 2:
            if ((typeof arguments[0] == "number") &&
                (typeof arguments[1] == "string")) {
                this.someMethod_Overload_number_string(arguments[0], arguments[1]);
            }
            else if ((typeof arguments[0] == "string") &&
                     (typeof arguments[1] == "number")) {
                this.someMethod_Overload_string_number(arguments[0], arguments[1]);
            }
            return; // Unreachable area for this case, unnecessary return statement
        }
    }
}


var testClass = new TestClass();
testClass.someMethod("string for v#1");
testClass.someMethod(12345, "string for v#2");
testClass.someMethod("string for v#3", 54321);

How to do method overloading in TypeScript language?

Answer 1

According to the specification, TypeScript does support method overloading, but it’s quite awkward and includes a lot of manual work checking types of parameters. I think it’s mostly because the closest you can get to method overloading in plain JavaScript includes that checking too and TypeScript tries to not modify actual method bodies to avoid any unnecessary runtime performance cost.

If I understand it correctly, you have to first write a method declaration for each of the overloads and then one method implementation that checks its arguments to decide which overload was called. The signature of the implementation has to be compatible with all of the overloads.

class TestClass {
    someMethod(stringParameter: string): void;
    someMethod(numberParameter: number, stringParameter: string): void;

    someMethod(stringOrNumberParameter: any, stringParameter?: string): void {
        if (stringOrNumberParameter && typeof stringOrNumberParameter == "number")
            alert("Variant #2: numberParameter = " + stringOrNumberParameter + ", stringParameter = " + stringParameter);
        else
            alert("Variant #1: stringParameter = " + stringOrNumberParameter);
    }
}