How to define string literal union type from constants in Typescript

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To get the type of a variable you need to use the typeof type operator:

const MY_CONSTANT = 'MY_CONSTANT' // must be const, no annotation. let or var will not work
const SOMETHING_ELSE = 'SOMETHING_ELSE' // must be const, no annotation. let or var will not work
type MyType = typeof MY_CONSTANT | typeof SOMETHING_ELSE

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Note:

Since there seems to be a lot of confusion when people use this. The const matters. If you use other types of declarations (let or var) the final type would be string. Only const preserves string literal types.

Note 2:

For this solution to work you must not specify any type annotation on the const, and let the compiler infer the type of the constants (ex this will not work :const MY_CONSTANT: string = 'MY_CONSTANT')

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