Enable strictNullChecks compiler option for all packages

[giladgray]

I think enabling strictNullChecks compiler option for datetime package will help us detect and prevent a whole host of potential errors, such as #322. it'll also address #274 by making the typings more accurate (as explicit null Dates actually means something in the component).

[adidahiya]

I think the compiler option should be enabled for all packages. Updating issue title to reflect this.

[giladgray]

Fair enough! Converting core will take some time due to its sheer size, hence why I started with datetime. Any idea if this will affect typings in a breaking way?

[adidahiya]

No, any changes in the generated .d.ts files ought to be tractable & compatible with consumers' tsc versions. If anything, it will expose bugs in consuming applications (not handling null / undefined values).

[giladgray]

in my ideal world, we also enable the no-null-keyword lint rule and any explicit usage of null would have to be whitelisted

https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/pull/419#discussion_r94995122

[giladgray]

started working on this and quickly ran into some heavy sadness with setState:

• https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/6613
• https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/12793

basically, this.state fields should all be required (otherwise you have to cast/check before using any as they're all X | undefined), but then we can't setState() with partial objects. the solution is Pick and @ericanderson has submitted a PR to DT to update react typings accordingly: https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/pull/13155 (blocked on this).

[adidahiya]

Cool, it looks like that PR will be merged in DefinitelyTyped soon enough and I don't mind blocking on it.

[adidahiya]

We're good to go on the setState enhancements in the React typings now. Pull the latest @types/react.

[brieb]

If we forbid using null, what's the best way to indicate an empty value for controlled input components. Using undefined doesn't work because that indicates that the component should be in uncontrolled mode. Some inputs have a logical empty value - like for text inputs, the empty value should be represented as "". But, what about for something less clear - like a date input. Should we export an explicit empty value to use in that case? Looks like we do something that here https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/blob/45c07c597c716655a028f092e9966cc65b54b15f/packages/core/src/components/forms/numericInput.tsx

[adidahiya]

(updated your link to be a permalink)

Should we export an explicit empty value to use in that case?

yeah, this sounds reasonable to me. I would be curious to see how far we can get with avoiding null in our public API.