Flow

Flow is a static type-checking tool for your application. When bigger-scale applications need faster and more productive codes, Flow comes to the rescue. In other words, Flow gives the power to the developer to decide how the developer wants the code to work in any browser and Flow will make sure it does that way.

Example: In this example, we will use flow.

Javascript




// @flow
function concat(a: string, b: string, c: string) {
    return a + b + c;
}
 
console.log(concat("Geeks", "For", "Geeks"));
console.log(concat(1, 2, 3));


Output:

w3wiki
//throws Error Because it is of different type

Explanation: We cannot see the numbers merge because we have defined a, b, c of datatype String.

Advantages of using Flow:

  • It is a static analysis tool.
  • Makes code faster and easy to scale.
  • Flow has better support for React and React native.  
  • It ensures easy adoption.

Disadvantages of using Flow:

  • It catches bugs in compile time, so theoretically it can miss some errors at run time. Javascript extension as we saw in flow work to type check the whole project, but as the app grows, we may find more bugs. Prop types ensure that the user passes values of the correct datatype. It is always a wise choice to use prototypes if the project size is large.

Difference between Flow and PropTypes in ReactJS

Flow is a Javascript extension to type-check your application while propTypes is the built-in type-checking ability of ReactJS. Their functionality may seem similar with a few differences. 

Table of Content

  • Flow
  • PropTypes

Similar Reads

Flow:

Flow is a static type-checking tool for your application. When bigger-scale applications need faster and more productive codes, Flow comes to the rescue. In other words, Flow gives the power to the developer to decide how the developer wants the code to work in any browser and Flow will make sure it does that way....

PropTypes:

...