Implement the NumericString type accross the monorepo

[gabrocheleau]

We have recently added a NumericString type ( ${number}). I have only implemented it in a single location, but there are most likely other opportunities to implement it accross the monorepo.

[MukulKolpe]

Hey @gabrocheleau, can I work on this issue?

[holgerd77]

Hi Mukul,
I guess I can answer this, since we have discussed this issue yesterday in our team call and so I also know that Gabriel does not necessarily plan to work on this himself, so you can take on this if you want! 🙂

So, to give you a bit more context: the issue is about this NumericString type, newly introduced to our @ethereumjs/util library. The task is a bit similar to when we introduced the PrefixedHexString type (some lines below) a couple of months earlier, in #3348.

The issue here is labeled as "good first issue", but I am not totally sure on this TBH or so at least its not totally trivial to find all the places where this is applicable, so this needs some solid knowledge of the code base/libraries or some good detective capabilities. 😂

If you want to take on maybe start with a first PR with only a handful of changes, than we can review and give feedback and we can see if you are on a good track! 🙂

Also to note: these changes will be breaking (not backwards compatible) on a TypeScript level, this is ok though since we are currently preparing for breaking releases with the work we are doing on our master branch.

[gabrocheleau]

Hey @gabrocheleau, can I work on this issue?

Hey @MukulKolpe ! Nice that you want to take this on :)

As Holger mentioned, we are in the process of refining types accross de monorepo, and we've done so notably with the PrefixedHexString type. We recently added the NumericString type (https://github.com/ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo/blob/master/packages/util/src/types.ts#L26) and implemented it in a few places (most notably here: https://github.com/ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo/blob/master/packages/block/src/from-beacon-payload.ts#L35) but we have not taken the time to look through the monorepo for other opportunities to implement it.

How I would recommend approaching this is going through the types.ts files of every package, and look for places where a string type might actually refer to a NumericString. You can deduct this from looking at how the type is used (for e.g. if it imports test data, you can look at the data). It might very well be that this is a relativley rare occurence, but we'll only know once we do that work! :)

Thanks again for tackling this!

[MukulKolpe]

Thank you, @gabrocheleau, @holgerd77, for sharing the context. I appreciate your insights and will let you know if I encounter any issues.

[holgerd77]

Hi @MukulKolpe, are you still planning to take on this issue or should we distribute/take on within the team?

[MukulKolpe]

Hi @holgerd77, sorry for the delay. I'll have the PR ready shortly.