client.suggest return type seems to be incorrect / behaves different from client.search

[marc-wilson]

• Package Name: @azure/search-documents
• Package Version: 12
• Operating system: Mac
• nodejs
  • 22:
• browser
  • chrome/latest:
• typescript
  • 5.6.3:
• Is the bug related to documentation in
  • README.md
  • source code documentation
  • SDK API docs on https://learn.microsoft.com

Describe the bug
When doing client.suggest(...), i want to define a type to model what the response is. Looking at the package, both SuggestOptions and client.suggest are generics. However, no matter what I do, the resulting array is always {} | Pick<MyModel, "field name"> | .... I don't think I should need to cast the result into MyModel (ie: result.document as MyModel). Should just work.

Here's an example of what is happening. I discovered this while converting my search over to a suggest. once i converted, i got some typescript errors. i believe it's an issue with the type returned by the suggest method.

export interface ISearchResult {
  description?: string;
  name?: string;
}


private async _search(term: string): Promise<ISearchResult[]> {
    if (!term) return [];
    const items: ISearchResult[] = [];
    const options: SuggestOptions<ISearchResult> = {
      top: 10,
      useFuzzyMatching: true,
      searchFields: ['name'],
      select: ['name', 'description'],
    };
    const results = await this._searchClient.suggest(term, 'suggestor-name', options);
    for await (const result of results.results) {
      const document = result.document; // TS says this is {} | Pick<ISearchResult, "name"> | ...
      console.log(document); // actually ISearchResult
      if (document.name) { ... } // TS2339: Property name does not exist on type Pick<ISearchResult, "name" | ....
      items.push(document);
    }
    return items;
  }

If i give a type to suggest, i get

TS2344: Type ISearchResult does not satisfy the constraint 'description' | 'name' | undefined

this._searchClient.suggest<ISearchResult>(...)

However, if you use searchClient.search, it acts as it should.

private async _search(term: string): Promise<ISearchResult[]> {
    if (!term) return [];
    const items: ISearchResult[] = [];
    const options: SearchOptions<ISearchResult> = {
      top: 10,
    };
    const results = await this._searchClient.search(term, options);
    for await (const result of results.results) {
      const document = result.document; // intellisense has it as ISearchResult
      console.log(document); // actually ISearchResult
      if (document.name) { ... } // no typescript error 
      items.push(result.document);
    }
    return items;
  }

Is this just a bug on the suggest method or is client.suggest supposed to act differently?