Class Metadata

Metadata reflection based on TypeScript's experimental support for stage 2 decorators and metadata.

Getting Started

If you are unfamiliar with decorators and metadata, I recommend checking out the TypeScript documentation and TC39's decorator proposal documentation.

• https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/decorators.html
• https://github.com/tc39/proposal-decorators

Prerequisites

The following versions of Node.js and TypeScript are required:

• Node.js 20 or higher
• TypeScript 4.7 or higher

This package is pure ESM, and you must configure your project to use the ESM package.

Installation

1. Install the package using npm

npm install class-metadata

2. Set compiler options in your tsconfig.json to enable experimental support for stage 2 decorators and metadata

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "experimentalDecorators": true,
        "emitDecoratorMetadata": true
    }
}

Usage

You can read and write metadata of classes, class members, and parameters.

It is recommended to use the MetadataKey class to handle metadata type-safely.

const EXAMPLE: MetadataKey<string> = new MetadataKey('example');

function Example(value: string): Decorator {
    return MetadataReflector.createDecorator((metadata: Metadata): void => {
        metadata.set(EXAMPLE, value);
    });
}

@Example('foo')
class Greeter {
    @Example('bar')
    public readonly defaultGreeting: string;

    public constructor(
        @Example('baz')
        defaultGreeting: string,
    ) {
        this.defaultGreeting = defaultGreeting;
    }

    @Example('qux')
    public greet(
        @Example('quux')
        greeting: string = this.defaultGreeting,
    ): string {
        return `Hello, ${greeting}`;
    }
}

Metadata for classes and class members is provided by the reflect-metadata package.

const classMetadata: Metadata = MetadataReflector.reflect(Greeter);

expect(classMetadata.getOwn('design:paramtypes')).toStrictEqual([String]);
expect(classMetadata.getOwn(EXAMPLE)).toBe('foo');

const fieldMetadata: Metadata = MetadataReflector.reflect(Greeter.prototype, 'defaultGreeting');

expect(fieldMetadata.getOwn('design:type')).toBe(String);
expect(fieldMetadata.getOwn(EXAMPLE)).toBe('bar');

const methodMetadata: Metadata = MetadataReflector.reflect(Greeter.prototype, 'greet');

expect(methodMetadata.getOwn('design:type')).toBe(Function);
expect(methodMetadata.getOwn('design:paramtypes')).toStrictEqual([String]);
expect(methodMetadata.getOwn('design:returntype')).toBe(String);
expect(methodMetadata.getOwn(EXAMPLE)).toBe('qux');

Metadata for parameters is provided by the Map object.

If the class or method has design:paramtypes metadata, the design:type metadata is set on the parameter.

const constructorParameterMetadata: Metadata = MetadataReflector.reflect(Greeter, null, 0);

expect(constructorParameterMetadata.getOwn('design:type')).toBe(String);
expect(constructorParameterMetadata.getOwn(EXAMPLE)).toBe('baz');

const methodParameterMetadata: Metadata = MetadataReflector.reflect(Greeter.prototype, 'greet', 0);

expect(methodParameterMetadata.getOwn('design:type')).toBe(String);
expect(methodParameterMetadata.getOwn(EXAMPLE)).toBe('quux');

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.