JavaScript Helper to determine the type of your variable

Tosh
2 min readMay 11, 2021

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Continuously you will need to know what type are the variables in order to create conditionals that are prepared to manipulate and maintain your code stable. For that reason I give you a cheat sheet to establish what is exactly your variable.

These are functions to which you pass your variable to indicate whether it is of a certain type or not.

Object

const myObject = {};const isObject = variable =>  variable.constructor === Objectconsole.log("myObject is an Object: ", isObject(myObject))

Array

const myArray = [];const isArray = variable => Array.isArray(variable)console.log("myArray is an Array: ", isArray(myArray))

Number, String, Boolean and Function

For these 4, it’s more simple. We just need a typeof following === and their type as string to make the condition.

const myNumber = 12;
const myString = "js";
const myBoolean = true;
const myFunction = () => "hello";
const isNumber = variable => typeof variable === 'number'
const isString = variable => typeof variable === 'string'
const isBoolean = variable => typeof variable === 'boolean'
const isFunction = variable => typeof variable === 'function'
console.log("myNumber is an Number: ", isNumber(myNumber))
console.log("myString is an String: ", isString(myString))
console.log("myBoolean is an Boolean: ", isBoolean(myBoolean))
console.log("myFunction is an Function: ", isFunction(myFunction))

Null and Undefined

Because null == undefined is true, the bellow code will catch both null and undefined.

const myNull = null;const isNullOrUndefined = variable == null;console.log("MyNull null or undefined:" ,isNullOrUndefined(myNull))

which is 100% equivalent to the more explicit but less concise:

if (variable === undefined || variable === null) 

Note: We are not using typeof on purpose because this solution above will cause a ReferenceError if the variable doesn't exist. This is a good thing. This ReferenceError is desirable in order to help and find any mistakes and fix them before shipping your code.

Summary

Object  variable.constructor === ObjectArray   Array.isArray(variable)Number  typeof variable === 'number'String  typeof variable === 'string'Boolean typeof variable === 'boolean'Function  typeof variable === 'function'Null Or Undefined  variable == null;Strictly Undefined Or Null 
variable === undefined || variable === null

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Tosh
Tosh

Written by Tosh

Software Engineering student @Flatiron

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