Astring

A tiny and fast JavaScript code generator from an ESTree-compliant AST.

Key features:

• Generates JavaScript code up to version 6.
• Works on ESTree-compliant ASTs such as the ones produced by Acorn.
• Runs both in a browser and in Node.
• Considerably faster than UglifyJS (up to 125×), Escodegen (up to 10×), and Esotope (up to 4×).
• No dependencies and small footprint (≈ 16 KB minified, ≈ 4 KB gziped).
• Supports comment generation with Astravel.
• Outputs readable code.

Installation

The easiest way is to install it with the Node Package Manager:

npm install astring

Alternatively, checkout this repository and install the development dependencies to build the module file:

git clone https://github.com/davidbonnet/astring.git
cd astring
npm install

The path to the module file is dist/astring.min.js and can be linked to from an HTML webpage. When used in a browser environment, the module exposes a global variable astring:

<script src="astring.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Usage

A live demo showing Astring in action is available.

The astring module consists of a function that takes two arguments: node and options. It returns a string representing the rendered code of the provided AST node. However, if an output stream is provided in the options, it writes to that stream and returns it. The options are:

• indent: string to use for indentation (defaults to "\t")
• lineEnd: string to use for line endings (defaults to "\n")
• startingIndentLevel: indent level to start from (defaults to 0)
• comments: generate comments if true (defaults to false)
• output: output stream to write the rendered code to (defaults to null)
• generator: custom code generator (defaults to astring.defaultGenerator)

Example

This example uses Acorn, a blazingly fast JavaScript AST producer and therefore the perfect companion of Astring.

// Make sure acorn and astring modules are imported
// Set example code
var code = "let answer = 4 + 7 * 5 + 3;\n";
// Parse it into an AST
var ast = acorn.parse(code, { ecmaVersion: 6 });
// Format it into a code string
var formattedCode = astring(ast, {
    indent: '   ',
    lineEnd: '\n'
});
// Check it
console.log((code === formattedCode) ? 'It works !' : 'Something went wrong…');

Using writable streams

This example for Node shows how to use writable streams to get the rendered code.

// Make sure acorn and astring modules are imported
// Set example code
var code = "let answer = 4 + 7 * 5 + 3;\n";
// Parse it into an AST
var ast = acorn.parse(code, { ecmaVersion: 6 });
// Format it and write the result to stdout
var stream = astring(ast, {
    output: process.stdout
});
// The returned value is the output stream
console.log('stream is process.stdout?', stream === process.stdout);

Generating comments

Astring supports comment generation, provided they are stored on the AST nodes. To do so, this example uses Astravel, a fast AST traveller and modifier.

// Make sure acorn, astravel and astring modules are imported
// Set example code
var code = [
    "// Compute the answer to everything",
    "let answer = 4 + 7 * 5 + 3;",
    "// Display it",
    "console.log(answer);"
].join('\n') + '\n';
// Parse it into an AST and retrieve the list of comments
var comments = [];
var ast = acorn.parse(code, {
    ecmaVersion: 6,
    locations: true,
    onComment: comments
});
// Attach comments to AST nodes
astravel.attachComments(ast, comments);
// Format it into a code string
var formattedCode = astring(ast, {
    indent: '   ',
    lineEnd: '\n',
    comments: true
});
// Check it
console.log(code === formattedCode ? 'It works !' : 'Something went wrong…');

Extending

Astring can easily be extended by updating or passing a custom generator. A generator consists of a mapping of node names and functions that take two arguments: node and state. The node points to the node from which to generate the code and the state holds various values and objects, the most important one being the output code stream.

This example shows how to support the await keyword that is part of the asynchronous functions proposal. The corresponding AwaitExpression is node is based on this suggested definition.

// Make sure the astring module is imported and that `Object.assign` is defined
// Create a custom generator that inherits from Astring's default generator
var customGenerator = Object.assign({}, astring.defaultGenerator, {
    AwaitExpression: function(node, state) {
        state.stream.write('await ');
        var argument = node.argument;
        if (argument != null) {
            this[argument.type](argument, state);
        }
    }
});
// Obtain a custom ast somehow (note that this ast is not valid)
var ast = {
   type: "Program",
   body: [{
      type: "ExpressionStatement",
      expression: {
          type: "AwaitExpression",
          argument: {
              type: "CallExpression",
              callee: {
                 type: "Identifier",
                 name: "callable"
              },
              arguments: []	
          }
      }
   }],
   sourceType: "module"
};
// Format it
var code = astring(ast, {
    generator: customGenerator
});
// Check it
console.log(code === 'await callable()\n' ? 'It works!' : 'Something went wrong…');

Command line interface

The bin/astring utility can be used to convert a JSON-formatted ESTree compliant AST of a JavaScript code. It accepts the following arguments:

• -i, --indent: string to use as indentation (defaults to "\t")
• -l, --line-end: string to use for line endings (defaults to "\n")
• -s, --starting-indent-level: indent level to start from (defaults to 0)
• -h, --help: print a usage message and exit
• -v, --version: print package version and exit

The utility reads the AST from stdin or from a provided list of files, and prints out the resulting code.

Example

As in the previous example, these examples use Acorn to get the JSON-formatted AST. This command pipes the AST output by Acorn from a script.js file to Astring and writes the formatted JavaScript code into a result.js file:

acorn --ecma6 script.js | astring --indent "  " > result.js

This command does the same, but reads the AST from an intermediary file:

acorn --ecma6 script.js > ast.json
astring --indent "  " ast.json > result.js

Building

All building scripts are defined in the package.json file and rely on the Node Package Manager. All commands must be run from within the root repository folder.

Production

The source code of Astring is written in JavaScript 6 and located at src/astring.js. It is compiled down to a minified JavaScript 5 file located at dist/astring.min.js using Browserify, Babel and UglifyJS. This is achieved by running:

npm install

If you are already using a JavaScript 6 to 5 compiler for your project, or a JavaScript 6 compliant interpreter, you can include the src/astring.js file directly.

A non-minified and source map free version can be obtained at dist/astring.js by running:

npm run build

Development

If you are working on Astring, you can use Watchify to build automatically at each modification a non-minified version (along with a source map for easy debugging) located at dist/astring.debug.js by running:

npm start

Tests

While making changes to Astring, make sure it passes the tests by running:

npm test

Benchmark

Also, make sure that the modifications don't alter the performance by running benchmarks that compare Astring against Escodegen and Esotope:

npm run benchmark

Roadmap

Planned features and releases are outlined on the milestones page.