Issues with Defining a Recursive Schema in Elysia

I'm currently working on a project using Elysia, and I'm trying to define a recursive schema for product variants. My goal is to allow each variant to have children, which can also be variants themselves.

Here’s a simplified version of my schema:

import { t } from "elysia";

export const variantSchema = t.Recursive(() =>
  t.Object({
    _id: t.Optional(t.String()),
    ref: t.String(),
    name: t.String({
      minLength: 1,
      error: "Name must be at least 1 character long",
    }),
    additionalPrice: t.Number({
      minimum: 0,
      error: "Additional price must be at least 0",
    }),
    discountPrice: t.Optional(
      t.Number({
        minimum: 0,
        error: "Discount price must be at least 0",
      }),
    ),
    currentStock: t.Number({
      minimum: 0,
      error: "Current stock must be at least 0",
    }),
    children: t.Optional(t.Array(variantSchema)), // Recursive reference
  }),
);

export const saveVariants = t.Object({
  productId: t.String(),
  variants: t.Array(variantSchema),
});

I ensured that I'm using t.Recursive() to define the recursive schema. I checked the property definitions to confirm they are correctly referencing the recursive schema. I followed the documentation regarding recursive types in TypeBox, but I still face issues. Question Has anyone faced a similar issue when defining recursive schemas in Elysia? What could be causing the ReferenceError: Cannot access 'variantSchema' before initialization. And how can I properly define a recursive schema without running into initialization errors?

Well the problem is that you are trying to use variantSchemas value in it's own definition before it is known therefore the error. The documentation of typebox gives a clear example on how to use t.Recursive. In general you want to make use of the parameter that the callback of t.Recursive receives. Applied to your case:

const variantSchema = t.Recursive(This => t.Object({
  children: t.Optional(t.Array(This))
}));

should do the trick. The parameter in the example called This refers to the schema that you are currently defining.