Where to get type referenced from?

[ringods]

Hello @scottrippey, I'm trying groq-builder in my site setup. I have followed the instructions using @sanity-typed/types to annotate my schema and create the exported type SanityValues in my sanity.config.ts.

I then run ts-simplify and generate the standalone Sanity types for my website project. All well so far.

The groq-builder README file near the end contains two typos. To import the types, the instruction currently reads:

import { createGroqBuilder, ExtractDocumentTypes } from 'groq-builder';
import { referenced, SanityValues } from './sanity-schema'; // This is the generated file

but should be:

import { createGroqBuilder } from 'groq-builder';
import type { ExtractDocumentTypes } from 'groq-builder';
import type { referenced, SanityValues } from './sanity-schema'; // This is the generated file

Aside from the missing type keyword, the import of SanityValues works, but not referenced. When I look at sanity-schema.d.ts file, the only exported value is the type SanityValues. Where should this referenced type come from?

[scottrippey]

@ringods Thank you for trying it out! While this is in alpha stage, we're getting close to a beta, and having you try this out is really useful and helpful. I'd love to help with this issue.

When the Sanity config contains any "reference" types, the generated types will include a special unique symbol called referenced. For example, here's an abbreviated Variant document definition:

import { defineArrayMember, defineField, defineType } from "@sanity-typed/types";

export const Variant = defineType({
  name: "variant",
  type: "document",
  fields: [
    defineField({ name: "name", type: "string", }),
    defineField({ name: "price", type: "number", }),
    defineField({
      name: "flavours",
      title: "Flavours",
      type: "array",
      of: [
        defineArrayMember({
          type: "reference",
          to: [{ type: "flavour" } as const],
        }),
      ],
    }),
  ],
});

Notice the flavours field is an array of references, pointing to flavour documents.

After running ts-simplify, you ought to get a type that looks like this:

export declare const referenced: unique symbol;
export type SanityValues = {
  variant: {
    _type: "variant";
    _id: string;
    name: string;
    price: number;
    flavours: {
        _type: "reference";
        [referenced]: "flavour";
        _ref: string;
        _key: string;
    }[];
  };
};

Notice how the [referenced]: "flavour" symbol is defined in there, which is needed to be able to understand how to follow the reference.

So, hopefully that explains what to expect. Can you please let me know what you're seeing instead?

[scottrippey]

Ok, cool, making progress. The problem is authors?: any, which is supposed to be more detailed than that; it should be like authors?: { _type: "reference", [referenced]: "author" }.
It seems like TS is having a hard time inferring that type, so it's dumping any. I'd like to know what that type looks like before ts-simplify ... like, if you did:

let x: SanityValues['post']['authors'];

and then hover over x in your IDE ... does it just show any too? Or perhaps there's an error message, or a real type?

[ringods]

@scottrippey short screenshot of the Post type in TS on in my Sanity Studio project:

and authors property:

Now, by switching from sanity to @sanity-typed/types, I noticed today that the content editor in Studio crashes. I guess there is something wrong with my schema which only now pops up by making the setup stricter. I will dig deeper and report back.

[scottrippey]

What do you see if you scroll down on the Authors type? I expect to see a _type: "reference", [referenced]: "author" near the bottom.

[ringods]

I ended up with dependency problems in my Sanity Studio setup which I had to fix first. After getting that fixed, I restarted my attempt to enable the type generation.

I first completed my schema with the different define... utility methods from sanity package. After verifying that all still worked, I switched the import to @sanity-typed/types and did the as const changes as documented.

Again, I first checked that my Studio still ran correctly. With all in place, I added the line to export all types as SanityValues and used ts-simplify to generate the standalone typings file.

This now contains the type SanityValues and the const referenced! 🎉

[saiichihashimoto]

If you're using sanity-typed, you could import referenced directly from @sanity-typed/types. Also, if your build setup works with it, you can import your types directly from sanity.config.ts rather than using ts-simplify to build a file. ts-simplify is an optimization that technically isn't required. Initially @sanity-typed/types and @sanity-typed/groq were relatively slow so this helped, but their performance has far improved. I'd try without them before adding a build step. Also, the pnpm setup breaks with the content editor, which may have been your issue there.

I'm the author of sanity-typed.