typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks VS typebox

Has been heavily optimized, both in terms of its types and runtime performance. Even including the static parser, many types are about an order of magnitude more efficient than equivalent Zod. Early results show it as marginally faster than any validator currently published to typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks, not including more complex cases where (2) would give ArkType a much more significant advantage.

Zod is a bit of an underdog but it is not fast, AJV which is slightly more common can validate and generate types too but requires using JSON syntax, TypeBox offers familiar syntax to Zod while still being JSON syntax in the background.

First, they're not fast (runtime type checking benchmarks).

Aha, so you're using a library in Java for this. You know about libraries in TS for this, there are plenty of them btw, but you don't use them because it's so easy. Express has `any` type for `req.body` because authors don't care about this either and it's so easy. And TypeScript is the one to blame in that you prefer to work with `any` type for incoming data rather than validating it.

It is so much faster than Zod that Zod basically doesn't show, https://moltar.github.io/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks/ and according to bundlejs, https://bundlejs.com/?q=zod%2Czod%2C%40sinclair%2Ftypebox&treeshake=%5B*%5D%2C%5B%7B+default+%7D%5D%2C%5B*%5D&config=%7B%22analysis%22%3Atrue%7D, it is even smaller. I genuinely have no clue why Zod is this popular in 2023.

TypeBox is a bit different to other libraries in this space where it's mostly intended to be used with a auxiliary JSON Schema validator. Although it provides a built in JSON Schema compiler (which is currently the fastest (not-AOT) runtime validator available for JavaScript today), it's equally intended to be used with validators like Ajv (or any other standards compliant validator)

I do plan to add some direct comparisons to https://github.com/moltar/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks as well but haven't had a chance yet.

I think it's more of a case of the extremely low performance bar that's been set by the status quo (for even the simplest of validation structures). There's been a lot of focus on the TS type inference, and less on the runtime performance (which actually matters more as it does reduce operational costs). It probably wouldn't be such an issue if the performance was reasonable, but I mean here's the full breakdown https://moltar.github.io/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks/.

I found a benchmark for runtime performance, but I haven't found any for intellisense/editor performance.

The documentation can be found here.

So far I like the commonly used approach in the Typescript community best:

1. Create your Schema using https://zod.dev or https://github.com/sinclairzx81/typebox

2. Generate your Types from the schema. It's very simple to create partial or composite types, e.g. UpdateModel, InsertModels, Arrays of them, etc.

3. Most modern Frameworks have first class support for validation, like is a great example Fastify (with typebox). Just reuse your schema definition.

That is very easy, obvious and effective.

There's a ton of schema validators out there and most devs have their personal favorite. Mine was zod and is now typebox + ajv.

If you're willing to document your API with an OpenAPI schema, then it should be possible to generate TypeScript types based on the OpenAPI schema with something like openapi-typescript. Also, Typebox can generate JSON schemas, maybe it can be used to generate something that the front-end can also use?

Well, I do provide extensibility for those bullet points you've listed to varying degrees (both schema and type representation), as well as offering a reference implementation for expressing a entirely different schema specification under the type system (specifically RFC8927 / JSON Type Definition). Reference implementation here. As for JSDoc, It's supported in code hints.

In setting out to build this service, we wanted to use gRPC for its APIs. We’ve been reaching for REST when building APIs so far, primarily out of necessity, i.e., our public APIs needed auto-generated client SDKs and docs for developers working with them. We built those APIs with Fastify and Typebox but felt burned by a code-first approach to generating an OpenAPI spec. I’ll spare you the details and save that experience/learning for another article. Suffice it to say we love gRPC’s schema-first approach. This blog post summarizes our feelings well