Preprocess

Zod now supports primitive coercion without the need for .preprocess(). See the coercion docs for more information.

Typically Zod operates under a "parse then transform" paradigm. Zod validates the input first, then passes it through a chain of transformation functions. (For more information about transforms, read the .transform docs.)

But sometimes you want to apply some transform to the input before parsing happens. A common use case: type coercion. Zod enables this with the z.preprocess().

const castToString = z.preprocess(val => String(val), z.string());

This returns a ZodEffects instance. ZodEffects is a wrapper class that contains all logic pertaining to preprocessing, refinements, and transforms.