Flowgen
The state of the converter
It's surprisingly robust and non-lossy as it stands right now, in big part thanks to how similar flow and typescript definition files are. Please see the output in this flow-typed PR for the state of the output.
Usage
Install using npm i flowgen --save
import { compiler } from 'flowgen';
// To compile a d.ts file
const flowdef = compiler.compileDefinitionFile(filename);
// To compile a string
const flowdef = compiler.compileDefinitionString(str);
// To compile a typescript test file to JavaScript
// esTarget = ES5/ES6 etc
const testCase = compiler.compileTest(path, esTarget)Recommended second step:
import { beautify } from 'flowgen';
// Make the definition human readable
const readableDef = beautify(generatedFlowdef);CLI
Standard usage (will produce export.flow.js):
npm i -g flowgen
flowgen lodash.d.ts
Options
-o / --output-file [outputFile]: Specifies the filename of the exported file, defaults to export.flow.js
Flags for specific cases
--flow-typed-format: Format output so it fits in the flow-typed repo
--compile-tests: Compile any sibling <filename>-tests.ts files found
The difficult parts
Namespaces
Namespaces have been a big headache. What it does right now is that it splits any namespace out into prefixed global scope declarations instead. It works OK, but its not pretty and there's some drawbacks to it.
External library imports
Definitions in TS and flow are often quite different, and imported types from other libraries dont usually have
a one-to-one mapping. Common cases are React.ReactElement, React.CSSPropsetc.
This might require manual processing, or we add a set of hardcoded mutations that handle common cases.
Odd TS conventions
Lodash has been one of the reference libraries i've worked with when creating the converter. The definition is mostly just a series of interfaces with the same name being re-declared over and over again for each function, which doesn't translate to flow at all. There's multiple ways of solving this but I dont have a great solution for it in place yet.
Contributing
All help is appreciated. Please tweet at me if you want some help getting started, or just want to discuss ideas on how to solve the trickier parts.