Extending Object.prototype with TypeScript

Question

I am currently working on a TypeScript API, which requires some additional features binding to the Object prototype (Object.prototype).

Consider the following code:

class Foo {

}

interface Object {
    GetFoo(): Foo;
    GetFooAsString(): string;
}

//This is problematic...
Object.prototype.GetFoo = function() {
    return new Foo();
    // Note, this line is just for testing...I don't want my function to just return a blank instance of Foo!
}

//This is ok.
Object.prototype.GetFooAsString = function () {
    return this.GetFoo().toString();
}

You might want to try this directly at the Playground.

As you can see, I have a class called Foo (not the actual object name I will be using). I have also extended the Object interface to include two new functions. Finally I have implemented the functions against the prototype (these work in pure JavaScript, it's just TypeScript that complains).

Where I have annotated "//this is problematic..." TypeScript highlights this with a red squiggly, and shows the following error:

Cannot convert '() => Foo' to '{ (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; }': Call signatures of types '() => Foo' and '{ (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; (): Foo; }' are incompatible
() => Foo

Either this is just a TypeScript bug (I know it's still in development phase, so a lot of the bugs need ironing out, and I have illustrated some of these on CodePlex already), or, I'm missing something.

Why am I getting this issue?

If it's not a TypeScript bug, how can I fix this?

Answer 1

I used to have:

// See if an array contains an object
Array.prototype.contains = function (obj) {
    var i = this.length;
    while (i--) {
        if (this[i] === obj) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

in order to make that code compile with typescript I added the line:

interface Array {
    contains(obj: Object): boolean;
}

Thanks basarat!