bug: `AirtableFieldSet` does not expose type matching Airtable Formula fields with error

[martinse]

Provide environment information

❯ npx envinfo --system --binaries

System:
OS: macOS 13.5
CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1068NG7 CPU @ 2.30GHz
Memory: 34.34 MB / 32.00 GB
Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
Binaries:
Node: 20.8.0 - ~/.volta/tools/image/node/20.8.0/bin/node
npm: 10.1.0 - ~/.volta/tools/image/node/20.8.0/bin/npm
pnpm: 8.7.6 - ~/.volta/bin/pnpm
Watchman: 2023.09.04.00 - /usr/local/bin/watchman

Describe the bug

AirtableFieldSet does not expose correct type for Airtable Formula fields with errors.

When creating a type/interface to represent an Airtable record with formulas - if the formula inside Airtable has errors, this cannot be typed through @trigger.dev/airtable.

E.g.:

type FormulaFieldType = string;
type FormulaFieldErrorType  = { error: string; };

export interface MyTable extends AirtableFieldSet {
    ID: number;
    MyFormulaField: FormulaFieldType | FormulaFieldErrorType
}

Gives:

TS2411: Property  MyFormulaField  of type  string | FormulaFieldErrorType  is not assignable to  string  index type
string | number | boolean | Collaborator | Collaborator[] | string[] | Attachment[] | undefined

The actual response data looks like this from within Trigger.dev:

[
  {
    "id": "recXXX",
    "fields": {
      "ID": 1,
      "ValidFormulaField": "Some value",
      "InvalidFormulaField": {
        "error": "#ERROR!"
      },
      ...
    }
  }
]

Reproduction repo

n/a

To reproduce

• Create a table in Airtable, containing a formula field with an error
• Create a TypeScript interface that represents the formula field as type string
• Fetch the data through @trigger.dev/airtable
• The result should contain an error object
• Try update the TypeScript interface with a type that can handle both a valid value and the error object

Additional information

Suggested fix: Add | {key: string} to AirtableFieldSet field type.

[matt-aitken]

@martinse do you happed to know if the official Airtable Node SDK supports this?

We're just wrapping their SDK and it's possible we've done something incorrect with the types we pass to their generic function.

[martinse]

Looking at the types from the official Airtable SDK I see the similar type def:

export interface FieldSet {
    [key: string]: undefined | string | number | boolean | Collaborator | ReadonlyArray<Collaborator> | ReadonlyArray<string> | ReadonlyArray<Attachment>;
}

Also reading their documentation at https://airtable.com/developers/web/api/field-model#formula it might be that they haven't defined the type correctly:

Cell format (read only)

string | number

I can't find any reference to this error object that I get back in their documentation. I was thinking perhaps Trigger.dev defined their own types due to the custom type in @trigger.dev/airtable but it seems as it just mirrors the official SDK type.

[nicktrn]

Just did some testing and you would have to extend that error type further, e.g. due to division by zero:

type FormulaFieldErrorType = { error: string } | { specialValue: "Infinity" | "NaN" };

As you verified, types are indeed incorrect in the official SDK.

Sadly, I can't recommend opening an issue in their repo. It seems largely unmaintained. There are still valid open issues from 5 years back that haven't received any attention.

I don't see a way to fix this nicely from our end - we'll likely have to resort to // @ts-ignore in a few places.