Checking types with JavaScript typeof

typeof is a JavaScript operator that returns the data type of the value you passed as the argument. The data type returned will be of string type.

let x = "Hello";
console.log(typeof x); // "string"

JavaScript is a weakly-typed language that allows you to change the data type of your variable after it has been declared:

let x = "Hello";
x = 12; // string is changed to number

In a strongly-typed language like Java, the code above will crash the program and outputs an error. But not so with JavaScript.

This is why the typeof operator is very useful to help you check your variables type as you code your application.

For example, suppose you want to perform an addition between two number variables, but one of them is mistakenly written as a string:

let x = 10;
let y = "10";

console.log(x + y); // "1010"

When you add the variables above, it will return “1010” of string type. This is because JavaScript doesn’t understand how to add a number into a string, but instead of crashing your program, it silently converts the x variable value into a string and concatenate both variables.

To handle this kind of bug, you can use a combination of a try..catch block and an if statement to check on the type of the variables and throw an error when they are not a number.

let x = 10;
let y = "10";

try {
  if (typeof x !== "number") {
    throw "Error: The variable x is not a number";
  }

  if (typeof y !== "number") {
    throw "Error: The variable y is not a number";
  }
} catch (err) {
  console.error(err);
  return;
}

console.log(x + y);

However, keep in mind that the value NaN in JavaScript also returns a number, so you also need to check if the value is NaN with isNaN() function:

let y = NaN;

try {
  if (typeof x !== "number" || isNaN(x)) {
    throw "Error: The variable x is not a number";
  }

  if (typeof y !== "number" || isNaN(y)) {
    throw "Error: The variable y is not a number";
  }
} catch (err) {
  console.error(err);
  return;
}

console.log(x + y);

Finally, here’s the return value of typeof for your reference: