Table definition has 'any' type

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

I'm defining all of my tables in an index.ts file; but on some tables like visitor_events I get this errors;

'visitor_events' implicitly has type 'any' because it does not have a type annotation and is referenced directly or indirectly in its own initializer.

On other tables however, I don't have the error and the PgTableWithColumns is correctly infered.

I've restarted TS Server and VSCode but with no success.

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

Ok so I've done a bit of research and here's some context.

The error seems to be linked to a circular reference - telling me that something's wrong in my schema.

I have 2 tables: visitorEvents and synchronisations - with circular reference that I defined in Prisma with specific names I had given for relations (which wasn't a problem in Prisma, I learned that naming relations explicitly does NOT results in a modified SQL schema).

Here was my previous schemas

export const visitor_events = pgTable('visitor_events', {
  // ... fields
 });

export const synchronisations = pgTable('synchronisations', {
// ... fields
firstVisitorEventId: integer("first_visitor_event_id").references(() => visitor_events.id),
lastVisitorEventId: integer("last_visitor_event_id").references(() => visitor_events.id),
});

So I ended up doing another table to define this relationship like below.

export const visitor_events = pgTable('visitor_events', {
  // ... fields
 });

export const synchronisations = pgTable('synchronisations', {
// ... fields
});

export const synchronisation_batches = pgTable('synchronisation_batches', {
  // ... fields
  synchronisationId: integer('synchronisation_id')
    .references(() => synchronisations.id)
    .notNull(),
  startEventId: integer('start_event_id')
    .references(() => visitor_events.id)
    .notNull(),
  endEventId: integer('end_event_id')
    .references(() => visitor_events.id)
    .notNull(),
});

The error disappeared. Here are my following up questions;
1. is typescript unable to infer type is expected behaviour ?
2. can I get more specific errors ?
3. more generally, if pgTable unallows circular references, why ? does it have to do with the order on which my tables are defined - circular references making it impossible to put one before the other ?

Context: this is an analytics use case where I need to have a synchronisations table to keep track of a given batch of events to process

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

Seems linked to https://discord.com/channels/1043890932593987624/1043890932593987627/1092514104201195521

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

Now when I go back to my previous implementation but by putting a AnyPgColumn like below - I still have circular reference but no errors

export const visitor_events = pgTable('visitor_events', {
  // ... fields
});

export const synchronisations = pgTable('synchronisations', {
  // ... fields  
firstVisitorEventId: integer('first_event_id').references((): AnyPgColumn => visitor_events.id),
  lastVisitorEventId: integer('last_event_id').references((): AnyPgColumn => visitor_events.id),
});

Why is that ?

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

Thank you 🙏

Ttacomanator

4/19/2023

This is in the docs:

Ttacomanator

4/19/2023

sisterCityId: integer('sister_city_id').references((): AnyPgColumn => cities.id), // self-referencing foreign key

Ttacomanator

4/19/2023

You need the AnyPgColumn to prevent the error

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

But why ? Is it unsafe to do so ?

Ttacomanator

4/19/2023

I'm not familiar with the details of why. You could do it without AnyPgColumn but it would have to be separated out. This way is a lot cleaner. Unsafe is a relative word. It technically would work without it, but you're going to get a TypeScript error if you don't either separate it out or use AnyPgColumn but I would use AnyPgColumn so you have less manual work to do and your definitions are together.

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

I see thank you. I think it's a TypeScript error and not a pgTable error - as it's possible to have a circular reference in PG but not in TypeScript sense making it impossible to do table definitions containing circular reference in TS without having the AnyPgColumn

Jjeanhdev

4/19/2023

After reading more about it - I'm going to keep a separate table for my special business use case

Bbloberenober

4/19/2023

it's not unsafe, the function signature is the same even without the explicit type annotation
it just helps TypeScript to understand there's no actual circular type dependency