How to declare a type as nullable in TypeScript?

All fields in JavaScript (and in TypeScript) can have the value null or undefined.

You can make the field optional which is different from nullable.

interface Employee1 {
    name: string;
    salary: number;
}

var a: Employee1 = { name: 'Bob', salary: 40000 }; // OK
var b: Employee1 = { name: 'Bob' }; // Not OK, you must have 'salary'
var c: Employee1 = { name: 'Bob', salary: undefined }; // OK
var d: Employee1 = { name: null, salary: undefined }; // OK

// OK
class SomeEmployeeA implements Employee1 {
    public name = 'Bob';
    public salary = 40000;
}

// Not OK: Must have 'salary'
class SomeEmployeeB implements Employee1 {
    public name: string;
}

Compare with:

interface Employee2 {
    name: string;
    salary?: number;
}

var a: Employee2 = { name: 'Bob', salary: 40000 }; // OK
var b: Employee2 = { name: 'Bob' }; // OK
var c: Employee2 = { name: 'Bob', salary: undefined }; // OK
var d: Employee2 = { name: null, salary: 'bob' }; // Not OK, salary must be a number

// OK, but doesn't make too much sense
class SomeEmployeeA implements Employee2 {
    public name = 'Bob';
}

Union type is in my mind best option in this case:

interface Employee{
   id: number;
   name: string;
   salary: number | null;
}

// Both cases are valid
let employe1: Employee = { id: 1, name: 'John', salary: 100 };
let employe2: Employee = { id: 1, name: 'John', salary: null };

EDIT : For this to work as expected, you should enable the strictNullChecks in tsconfig.

To be more C# like, define the Nullable type like this:

type Nullable<T> = T | null;

interface Employee{
   id: number;
   name: string;
   salary: Nullable<number>;
}

Bonus:

To make Nullable behave like a built in Typescript type, define it in a global.d.ts definition file in the root source folder. This path worked for me: /src/global.d.ts