LinguistJS

Analyses the languages of all files in a given folder and collates the results.

Powered by github-linguist, although it doesn't need to be installed.

Install

Node.js must be installed to be able to use this. LinguistJS is available on npm as linguist-js.

Install locally using npm install linguist-js and import it into your code like so:

const linguist = require('linguist-js');

Or install globally using npm install -g linguist-js and run using the CLI command linguist.

linguist --help

Usage

LinguistJS contains one function which analyses a given folder.

As an example, take the following file structure:

/
| src
| | cli.js 1kB
| | index.ts 2kB
| readme.md 3kB
| no-lang 10B

Running LinguistJS on this folder will return the following JSON:

{
  "files": {
    "count": 4,
    "bytes": 6010,
    "results": {
      "/src/index.ts": "TypeScript",
      "/src/cli.js": "JavaScript",
      "/readme.md": "Markdown",
      "/no-lang": null,
    }
  },
  "languages": {
    "count": 3,
    "bytes": 6000,
    "results": {
      "JavaScript": { "type": "programming", "bytes": 1000, "color": "#f1e05a" },
      "TypeScript": { "type": "programming", "bytes": 2000, "color": "#2b7489" },
      "Markdown": { "type": "prose", "bytes": 3000, "color": "#083fa1" },
    },
  },
  "unknown": {
    "count": 1,
    "bytes": 10,
    "filenames": {
      "no-lang": 10,
    },
    "extensions": {},
  },
}

Notes

• File paths in the output use only forward slashes as delimiters, even on Windows.
• Unless running in offline mode, do not rely on any language classification output from LinguistJS being unchanged between runs. Language data is fetched each run from the latest classifications of github-linguist. This data is subject to change at any time and may change the results of a run even when using the same version of Linguist.

API

Node

const linguist = require('linguist-js');
let folder = './src';
let options = { keepVendored: false, quick: false };
const { files, languages, unknown } = linguist(folder, options);

• linguist(entry?, opts?) (default export): Analyse the language of all files found in a folder.
  • entry (optional; string or string array): The folder(s) to analyse (defaults to ./).
  • opts (optional; object): An object containing analyser options.
    • fileContent (string or string array): Provides the file content associated with the file name(s) given as entry to analyse instead of reading from a folder on disk.
    • ignoredFiles (string array): A list of file path globs to explicitly ignore.
    • ignoredLanguages (string array): A list of languages to ignore.
    • categories (string array): A list of programming language categories that should be included in the results. Defaults to ['data', 'markup', 'programming', 'prose'].
    • childLanguages (boolean): Whether to display sub-languages instead of their parents when possible (defaults to false).
    • quick (boolean): Whether to skip complex language analysis such as the checking of heuristics and gitattributes statements (defaults to false). Alias for checkAttributes:false, checkIgnored:false, checkHeuristics:false, checkShebang:false, checkModeline:false.
    • offline (boolean): Whether to use pre-packaged metadata files instead of fetching them from GitHub at runtime (defaults to false).
    • keepVendored (boolean): Whether to keep vendored files (dependencies, etc) (defaults to false). Does nothing when fileContent is set.
    • keepBinary (boolean): Whether binary files should be included in the output (defaults to false).
    • relativePaths (boolean): Change the absolute file paths in the output to be relative to the current working directory (defaults to false).
    • checkAttributes (boolean): Force the checking of .gitattributes files (defaults to true unless quick is set). Does nothing when fileContent is set.
    • checkIgnored (boolean): Force the checking of .gitignore files (defaults to true unless quick is set). Does nothing when fileContent is set.
    • checkHeuristics (boolean): Apply heuristics to ambiguous languages (defaults to true unless quick is set).
    • checkShebang (boolean): Check shebang (#!) lines for explicit language classification (defaults to true unless quick is set).
    • checkModeline (boolean): Check modelines for explicit language classification (defaults to true unless quick is set).

Command-line

linguist --analyze [<folder>] [<...options>]
linguist --help

• --analyze: Analyse the language of all files found in a folder.
  • <folders...>: The folders to analyse (defaults to ./).
  • --ignoredFiles <glob1> [[--ignoredFiles] <glob2> ...]: A list of file path globs to ignore. When specifying more than one glob, this option can either be called with multiple values given (e.g., --ignoredFiles *.txt *.json) or be called multiple times (e.g., --ignoredFiles *.txt --ignoredFiles *.json). Both ways are equivalent.
  • --ignoredLanguages: A list of languages to ignore.
  • --categories <categories...>: A list of space-delimited categories that should be displayed in the output.
  • --childLanguages: Whether to display sub-languages instead of their parents, when possible.
  • --json: Display the outputted language data as JSON.
  • --tree <traversal>: A dot-delimited traversal to the nested object that should be logged to the console instead of the entire output. Requires --json to be specified.
  • --quick: Whether to skip the checking of .gitattributes and .gitignore files for manual language classifications. Alias for --checkAttributes=false --checkIgnored=false --checkHeuristics=false --checkShebang=false --checkModeline=false.
  • --offline: Use pre-packaged metadata files instead of fetching them from GitHub at runtime.
  • --keepVendored: Whether to include vendored files (auto-generated files, dependencies folder, etc).
  • --keepBinary: Whether binary files should be excluded from the output.
  • --relativePaths: Change the absolute file paths in the output to be relative to the current working directory.
  • --checkAttributes: Force the checking of .gitatributes files (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkIgnored: Force the checking of .gitignore files (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkHeuristics: Apply heuristics to ambiguous languages (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkShebang: Check shebang (#!) lines for explicit classification (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkModeline: Check modelines for explicit classification (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
• --help: Display a help message.
• --version: Display the current version of linguist-js.