How to Solve “Not all code paths return a value” error in Angular 12/13, TypeScript

While working in an Angular 12/13 or any other version , you may come across a TypeScript error “Not all code paths return a value”.

For example, the following code will return the above error in an Angular application

init() {
    let condition = true;
    if (condition) {
      return 'Success'
    } else {
      console.log('Error')
    }
  }

The reason for the error message in the above code is, the init function is not returning a value if the value of condition is false which can lead to some potential errors in the application. To solve the problem simply return something in all possible scenarios. To solve the above code, we can add a return statement to the else block like this

init() {
    let condition = true;
    if (condition) {
      return 'Success'
    } else {
      console.log('Error')
      return 'Error Message'
    }
  }

The “Not all code paths return a value” error may also occur in try and catch blocks. For example, the following code also results in the same TypeScript error

initialize() {
    try {
      // code to try
      return 'Success'
    } catch (error) {
      console.log(error);
    }
  }

Similar to the way we added return statement to the else block earlier, here also we can add a return statement (which can also be empty if you do not want to return anything) to the catch block like this

initialize() {
    try {
      // code to try
      return 'Success'
    } catch (error) {
      console.log(error);
      return;
    }
  }