.. | ||
acorn/dist | ||
acorn-loose/dist | ||
acorn-walk/dist | ||
bin | ||
dist | ||
AUTHORS | ||
CHANGELOG.md | ||
LICENSE | ||
package.json | ||
README.md |
Acorn
A tiny, fast JavaScript parser, written completely in JavaScript.
Community
Acorn is open source software released under an MIT license.
You are welcome to report bugs or create pull requests on github. For questions and discussion, please use the Tern discussion forum.
Installation
The easiest way to install acorn is with npm
.
npm install acorn
Alternately, you can download the source and build acorn yourself:
git clone https://github.com/acornjs/acorn.git
cd acorn
npm install
npm run build
Components
When run in a CommonJS (node.js) or AMD environment, exported values
appear in the interfaces exposed by the individual files, as usual.
When loaded in the browser (Acorn works in any JS-enabled browser more
recent than IE5) without any kind of module management, a single
global object acorn
will be defined, and all the exported properties
will be added to that.
Main parser
This is implemented in dist/acorn.js
, and is what you get when you
require("acorn")
in node.js.
parse(input, options)
is used to parse a JavaScript program.
The input
parameter is a string, options
can be undefined or an
object setting some of the options listed below. The return value will
be an abstract syntax tree object as specified by the
ESTree spec.
When encountering a syntax error, the parser will raise a
SyntaxError
object with a meaningful message. The error object will
have a pos
property that indicates the character offset at which the
error occurred, and a loc
object that contains a {line, column}
object referring to that same position.
-
ecmaVersion: Indicates the ECMAScript version to parse. Must be either 3, 5, 6 (2015), 7 (2016), 8 (2017), 9 (2018) or 10 (2019, partial support). This influences support for strict mode, the set of reserved words, and support for new syntax features. Default is 7.
NOTE: Only 'stage 4' (finalized) ECMAScript features are being implemented by Acorn.
-
sourceType: Indicate the mode the code should be parsed in. Can be either
"script"
or"module"
. This influences global strict mode and parsing ofimport
andexport
declarations. -
onInsertedSemicolon: If given a callback, that callback will be called whenever a missing semicolon is inserted by the parser. The callback will be given the character offset of the point where the semicolon is inserted as argument, and if
locations
is on, also a{line, column}
object representing this position. -
onTrailingComma: Like
onInsertedSemicolon
, but for trailing commas. -
allowReserved: If
false
, using a reserved word will generate an error. Defaults totrue
forecmaVersion
3,false
for higher versions. When given the value"never"
, reserved words and keywords can also not be used as property names (as in Internet Explorer's old parser). -
allowReturnOutsideFunction: By default, a return statement at the top level raises an error. Set this to
true
to accept such code. -
allowImportExportEverywhere: By default,
import
andexport
declarations can only appear at a program's top level. Setting this option totrue
allows them anywhere where a statement is allowed. -
allowAwaitOutsideFunction: By default,
await
expressions can only appear insideasync
functions. Setting this option totrue
allows to have top-levelawait
expressions. They are still not allowed in non-async
functions, though. -
allowHashBang: When this is enabled (off by default), if the code starts with the characters
#!
(as in a shellscript), the first line will be treated as a comment. -
locations: When
true
, each node has aloc
object attached withstart
andend
subobjects, each of which contains the one-based line and zero-based column numbers in{line, column}
form. Default isfalse
. -
onToken: If a function is passed for this option, each found token will be passed in same format as tokens returned from
tokenizer().getToken()
.If array is passed, each found token is pushed to it.
Note that you are not allowed to call the parser from the callback—that will corrupt its internal state.
-
onComment: If a function is passed for this option, whenever a comment is encountered the function will be called with the following parameters:
block
:true
if the comment is a block comment, false if it is a line comment.text
: The content of the comment.start
: Character offset of the start of the comment.end
: Character offset of the end of the comment.
When the
locations
options is on, the{line, column}
locations of the comment’s start and end are passed as two additional parameters.If array is passed for this option, each found comment is pushed to it as object in Esprima format:
{ "type": "Line" | "Block", "value": "comment text", "start": Number, "end": Number, // If `locations` option is on: "loc": { "start": {line: Number, column: Number} "end": {line: Number, column: Number} }, // If `ranges` option is on: "range": [Number, Number] }
Note that you are not allowed to call the parser from the callback—that will corrupt its internal state.
-
ranges: Nodes have their start and end characters offsets recorded in
start
andend
properties (directly on the node, rather than theloc
object, which holds line/column data. To also add a semi-standardizedrange
property holding a[start, end]
array with the same numbers, set theranges
option totrue
. -
program: It is possible to parse multiple files into a single AST by passing the tree produced by parsing the first file as the
program
option in subsequent parses. This will add the toplevel forms of the parsed file to the "Program" (top) node of an existing parse tree. -
sourceFile: When the
locations
option istrue
, you can pass this option to add asource
attribute in every node’sloc
object. Note that the contents of this option are not examined or processed in any way; you are free to use whatever format you choose. -
directSourceFile: Like
sourceFile
, but asourceFile
property will be added (regardless of thelocation
option) directly to the nodes, rather than theloc
object. -
preserveParens: If this option is
true
, parenthesized expressions are represented by (non-standard)ParenthesizedExpression
nodes that have a singleexpression
property containing the expression inside parentheses.
parseExpressionAt(input, offset, options)
will parse a single
expression in a string, and return its AST. It will not complain if
there is more of the string left after the expression.
getLineInfo(input, offset)
can be used to get a {line, column}
object for a given program string and character offset.
tokenizer(input, options)
returns an object with a getToken
method that can be called repeatedly to get the next token, a {start, end, type, value}
object (with added loc
property when the
locations
option is enabled and range
property when the ranges
option is enabled). When the token's type is tokTypes.eof
, you
should stop calling the method, since it will keep returning that same
token forever.
In ES6 environment, returned result can be used as any other protocol-compliant iterable:
for (let token of acorn.tokenizer(str)) {
// iterate over the tokens
}
// transform code to array of tokens:
var tokens = [...acorn.tokenizer(str)];
tokTypes holds an object mapping names to the token type objects
that end up in the type
properties of tokens.
Note on using with Escodegen
Escodegen supports generating comments from AST, attached in Esprima-specific format. In order to simulate same format in Acorn, consider following example:
var comments = [], tokens = [];
var ast = acorn.parse('var x = 42; // answer', {
// collect ranges for each node
ranges: true,
// collect comments in Esprima's format
onComment: comments,
// collect token ranges
onToken: tokens
});
// attach comments using collected information
escodegen.attachComments(ast, comments, tokens);
// generate code
console.log(escodegen.generate(ast, {comment: true}));
// > 'var x = 42; // answer'
dist/acorn_loose.js
This file implements an error-tolerant parser. It exposes a single
function. The loose parser is accessible in node.js via require("acorn/dist/acorn_loose")
.
parse_dammit(input, options)
takes the same arguments and
returns the same syntax tree as the parse
function in acorn.js
,
but never raises an error, and will do its best to parse syntactically
invalid code in as meaningful a way as it can. It'll insert identifier
nodes with name "✖"
as placeholders in places where it can't make
sense of the input. Depends on acorn.js
, because it uses the same
tokenizer.
dist/walk.js
Implements an abstract syntax tree walker. Will store its interface in
acorn.walk
when loaded without a module system.
simple(node, visitors, base, state)
does a 'simple' walk over
a tree. node
should be the AST node to walk, and visitors
an
object with properties whose names correspond to node types in the
ESTree spec. The properties should contain functions
that will be called with the node object and, if applicable the state
at that point. The last two arguments are optional. base
is a walker
algorithm, and state
is a start state. The default walker will
simply visit all statements and expressions and not produce a
meaningful state. (An example of a use of state is to track scope at
each point in the tree.)
const acorn = require("acorn")
const walk = require("acorn/dist/walk")
walk.simple(acorn.parse("let x = 10"), {
Literal(node) {
console.log(`Found a literal: ${node.value}`)
}
})
ancestor(node, visitors, base, state)
does a 'simple' walk over
a tree, building up an array of ancestor nodes (including the current node)
and passing the array to the callbacks as a third parameter.
const acorn = require("acorn")
const walk = require("acorn/dist/walk")
walk.ancestor(acorn.parse("foo('hi')"), {
Literal(_, ancestors) {
console.log("This literal's ancestors are:",
ancestors.map(n => n.type))
}
})
recursive(node, state, functions, base)
does a 'recursive'
walk, where the walker functions are responsible for continuing the
walk on the child nodes of their target node. state
is the start
state, and functions
should contain an object that maps node types
to walker functions. Such functions are called with (node, state, c)
arguments, and can cause the walk to continue on a sub-node by calling
the c
argument on it with (node, state)
arguments. The optional
base
argument provides the fallback walker functions for node types
that aren't handled in the functions
object. If not given, the
default walkers will be used.
make(functions, base)
builds a new walker object by using the
walker functions in functions
and filling in the missing ones by
taking defaults from base
.
full(node, callback, base, state)
does a 'full'
walk over a tree, calling the callback with the arguments (node, state, type)
for each node
fullAncestor(node, callback, base, state)
does a 'full' walk over
a tree, building up an array of ancestor nodes (including the current node)
and passing the array to the callbacks as a third parameter.
const acorn = require("acorn")
const walk = require("acorn/dist/walk")
walk.full(acorn.parse("1 + 1"), node => {
console.log(`There's a ${node.type} node at ${node.ch}`)
})
findNodeAt(node, start, end, test, base, state)
tries to
locate a node in a tree at the given start and/or end offsets, which
satisfies the predicate test
. start
and end
can be either null
(as wildcard) or a number. test
may be a string (indicating a node
type) or a function that takes (nodeType, node)
arguments and
returns a boolean indicating whether this node is interesting. base
and state
are optional, and can be used to specify a custom walker.
Nodes are tested from inner to outer, so if two nodes match the
boundaries, the inner one will be preferred.
findNodeAround(node, pos, test, base, state)
is a lot like
findNodeAt
, but will match any node that exists 'around' (spanning)
the given position.
findNodeAfter(node, pos, test, base, state)
is similar to
findNodeAround
, but will match all nodes after the given position
(testing outer nodes before inner nodes).
Command line interface
The bin/acorn
utility can be used to parse a file from the command
line. It accepts as arguments its input file and the following
options:
-
--ecma3|--ecma5|--ecma6|--ecma7|--ecma8|--ecma9|--ecma10
: Sets the ECMAScript version to parse. Default is version 7. -
--module
: Sets the parsing mode to"module"
. Is set to"script"
otherwise. -
--locations
: Attaches a "loc" object to each node with "start" and "end" subobjects, each of which contains the one-based line and zero-based column numbers in{line, column}
form. -
--allow-hash-bang
: If the code starts with the characters #! (as in a shellscript), the first line will be treated as a comment. -
--compact
: No whitespace is used in the AST output. -
--silent
: Do not output the AST, just return the exit status. -
--help
: Print the usage information and quit.
The utility spits out the syntax tree as JSON data.
Build system
Acorn is written in ECMAScript 6, as a set of small modules, in the
project's src
directory, and compiled down to bigger ECMAScript 3
files in dist
using Browserify and
Babel. If you are already using Babel, you can
consider including the modules directly.
The command-line test runner (npm test
) uses the ES6 modules. The
browser-based test page (test/index.html
) uses the compiled modules.
The bin/build-acorn.js
script builds the latter from the former.
If you are working on Acorn, you'll probably want to try the code out directly, without an intermediate build step. In your scripts, you can register the Babel require shim like this:
require("babel-core/register")
That will allow you to directly require
the ES6 modules.
Plugins
Acorn is designed support allow plugins which, within reasonable bounds, redefine the way the parser works. Plugins can add new token types and new tokenizer contexts (if necessary), and extend methods in the parser object. This is not a clean, elegant API—using it requires an understanding of Acorn's internals, and plugins are likely to break whenever those internals are significantly changed. But still, it is possible, in this way, to create parsers for JavaScript dialects without forking all of Acorn. And in principle it is even possible to combine such plugins, so that if you have, for example, a plugin for parsing types and a plugin for parsing JSX-style XML literals, you could load them both and parse code with both JSX tags and types.
A plugin should register itself by adding a property to
acorn.plugins
, which holds a function. Calling acorn.parse
, a
plugins
option can be passed, holding an object mapping plugin names
to configuration values (or just true
for plugins that don't take
options). After the parser object has been created, the initialization
functions for the chosen plugins are called with (parser, configValue)
arguments. They are expected to use the parser.extend
method to extend parser methods. For example, the readToken
method
could be extended like this:
parser.extend("readToken", function(nextMethod) {
return function(code) {
console.log("Reading a token!")
return nextMethod.call(this, code)
}
})
The nextMethod
argument passed to extend
's second argument is the
previous value of this method, and should usually be called through to
whenever the extended method does not handle the call itself.
Similarly, the loose parser allows plugins to register themselves via
acorn.pluginsLoose
. The extension mechanism is the same as for the
normal parser:
looseParser.extend("readToken", function(nextMethod) {
return function() {
console.log("Reading a token in the loose parser!")
return nextMethod.call(this)
}
})
Existing plugins
acorn-jsx
: Parse Facebook JSX syntax extensionsacorn-objj
: Objective-J language parser built as Acorn plugin
Plugins for ECMAScript proposals:
acorn-stage3
: Parse most stage 3 proposals, bundling:acorn-async-iteration
: Parse async iteration proposalacorn-bigint
: Parse BigInt proposalacorn-class-fields
: Parse class fields proposalacorn-dynamic-import
: Parse import() proposalacorn-import-meta
: Parse import.meta proposalacorn-numeric-separator
: Parse numeric separator proposalacorn-optional-catch-binding
: Parse optional catch binding proposalacorn-private-methods
: parse private methods, getters and setters proposalacorn5-object-spread
: Parse Object Rest/Spread Properties proposal
acorn-object-rest-spread
: Parse Object Rest/Spread Properties proposalacorn-es7
: Parse decorator syntax proposalacorn-static-class-property-initializer
: Partial support for static class properties from ES Class Fields & Static Properties Proposal to support static property initializers in React components written as ES6+ classes