[jdthedisciple]

Duh, that's what I did. And every other variant one can possibly think of. To no avail.

That's what cost me the hour or two.

This works like a charm in a strictly typed language like C#, but TypeScript just hasn't got it down correctly yet.

[explaininjs]

Show a sample of the issue if you can.

[jdthedisciple]

The code in question:

    (e: Event) => {
        let t: EventTarget | null = e.target;
        // here "t as HTMLInputElement" did not work
        if (t instanceof HTMLInputElement && t.files && t.files[0]) {
            const file = t.files[0];
            if (file) {
                (myImageElem! as HTMLImageElement).src = URL.createObjectURL(file);
            }
        }
    }

TS wouldn't accept it. My guess is it's not cluttered enough.

My final vanilla version OTOH:

    (e) => {
        const t = e.target;
        if (t.files) {
            const file = t.files[0];
            myImageElem.src = URL.createObjectURL(file);
        }
    }

How is the latter not a million times more elegant? Why do I need to clutter everything with types that I won't even think twice about?

[SebastianKra]

That second version is literally 100% verified and valid Typescript.

`e` is inferred from `HTMLProps<HTMLInputElement>['onChange']`

`t` is inferred from `e`

`files` is inferred from `t`

No halfway experienced TS developer would write any of these annotations.

If you got the myImageElem from a ref, you may need to add a !, because yes, it's not technically guaranteed that the ref is set by the time the callback is called.

[Dylan16807]

Well I haven't ever used next.js in particular, but if I go open a .tsx file and add <input type="file" onChange={[final vanilla version code]} />, it works fine.

t gets inferred as `EventTarget & HTMLInputElement`

The only error is that "myImageElem" isn't defined by the snippet, which is to be expected.

If I insert your first snippet, it complains that (e:Event) isn't the right type, but (e) or (e:any) makes the whole thing happy (except "myImageElem").

If I remove the imprecise "Event" typing on e, then your first snippet can be simplified to:

  let t = e.target;
  if (t.files && t.files[0]) {

If I keep (e: Event), then the code with "instanceof" works, as does:

  let t = e.target as HTMLInputElement;
  if (t.files && t.files[0]) {

[jdthedisciple]

> The only error is that "myImageElem" isn't defined by the snippet, which is to be expected.

It's the ID of a DOM element. No need to define it (for me). But anyway still good I will try your code, thanks.

[Dylan16807]

In that case the only thing you need to make your vanilla code work as typescript is to put the following somewhere:

  declare var myImageElem: HTMLImageElement;

[consilient]

`(e: Event) =>` means you accept any event whatsoever.

[jdthedisciple]

That is probably true, however as I said it should (IMO) still work if I then cast its target to HTMLInputElement.