no-empty-interface

Disallow the declaration of empty interfaces.

✅

Extending "plugin:@typescript-eslint/recommended" in an ESLint configuration enables this rule.

🛠

Some problems reported by this rule are automatically fixable by the --fix ESLint command line option.

💡

Some problems reported by this rule are manually fixable by editor suggestions.

An empty interface in TypeScript does very little: any non-nullable value is assignable to {}. Using an empty interface is often a sign of programmer error, such as misunderstanding the concept of {} or forgetting to fill in fields.

This rule aims to ensure that only meaningful interfaces are declared in the code.

.eslintrc.cjs

module.exports = {
  "rules": {
    "@typescript-eslint/no-empty-interface": "error"
  }
};

Examples

❌ Incorrect

// an empty interface
interface Foo {}

// an interface with only one supertype (Bar === Foo)
interface Bar extends Foo {}

// an interface with an empty list of supertypes
interface Baz {}

✅ Correct

// an interface with any number of members
interface Foo {
  name: string;
}

// same as above
interface Bar {
  age: number;
}

// an interface with more than one supertype
// in this case the interface can be used as a replacement of a union type.
interface Baz extends Foo, Bar {}

Options

This rule accepts a single object option with the following default configuration:

{
  "@typescript-eslint/no-empty-interface": [
    "error",
    {
      "allowSingleExtends": false
    }
  ]
}

• allowSingleExtends: true will silence warnings about extending a single interface without adding additional members

Options

When Not To Use It

This rule accepts an options object with the following properties:

interface Options {
  allowSingleExtends?: boolean;
}

const defaultOptions: Options = [{ allowSingleExtends: false }];

If you don't care about having empty/meaningless interfaces, then you will not need this rule.

Resources

• Rule source
• Test source