Discussion on the future of schema generators

[HoldYourWaffle]

There's currently some discussion on the future of schema generators over at https://github.com/vega/ts-json-schema-generator/issues/101.

It's mostly related to uniting the 3 big (and unfortunately buggy) modules that are used for the same purpose (generating JSON schema's from TypeScript sources) together into one, (mostly) feature complete all-round generator.

These 3 modules are:

• typescript-json-schema (this repository)
• typescript-to-json-schema at xiag-ag/typescript-to-json-schemas
• ts-json-schema-generator at vega/ts-json-schema-generator

We're currently thinking about deprecating this module in favor of vega/ts-json-schema-generator somewhere in the future (for various reasons you can read in the aforementioned issue). However, nothing has really been decided yet and we would love to hear some more opinions on this matter!

[hammadzz]

@domoritz I think it maybe time to make that call!

Following some of the issues here it does seem you may have subconsciously deprecated this module in favour of vega/ts-json-schema-generator. It does make sense to me to reduce redundant effort. It solved my issue and seems to have more support.

[domoritz]

The advantage of this library here is that it is a single file. Yes, I do not have the cycles to maintain this library actively but if someone wants to use it and it works for them as it, it may still be a right tool.

Having said that, some things may change over the next few months and I am open to reconsidering my decision later.

[JavierPAYTEF]

It would be good to point somewhere because there are a lot of pending pull requests and issues. I was about to ask about supporting bigint but I see a lot of people mentioning not supporting Symbol with no answers, and most of the issues don't seem to have any answers either. Is this still active?

[alfaproject]

If I'm starting a new project that requires this functionality, should I prefer this library, or would you recommend another one?

[domoritz]

vega/ts-json-schema-generator is a lot better than this one on edge cases.

I'm curious why you want to start a new project. Maybe you can help with the new one I linked to.

[alfaproject]

I didn't mean a project to replace any of these libraries. I mean a consumer for my own application. So I guess vega/ts-json-schema-generator is what you recommend then, thanks!

[domoritz]

Yes. This repo is in maintenance mode and I personally don't fix anything and only accept prs and make releases.

[bdarcus]

FWIW, I am working on a project where I started with this package for schema generation, then moved to ts-json-schema-generator based on this issue, where I triggered a bug there on a feature branch that this package avoids.

EDIT: minimal examples that generates an incorrect schema, in this gist.

Does anyone have recent experience with quicktype in comparison?

[tomwidmer]

quicktype appears to use @mark.probst/typescript-json-schema, which is a mysterious fork of this repo - I don't know where the source code lives. See e.g. https://github.com/glideapps/quicktype/blob/master/packages/quicktype-typescript-input/src/index.ts

[domoritz]

Odd. I wonder why they don't use this fork.