baron 0.4

Full Syntax Tree for python to make writing refactoring code a realist task

Introduction
============

Baron is a Full Syntax Tree (FST) library for Python. By opposition to an [AST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree) which
drops some syntax information in the process of its creation (like empty lines,
comments, formatting), a FST keeps everything and guarantees the operation
<code>fst\_to\_code(code\_to\_fst(source\_code)) == source\_code</code>.

Installation
============

pip install baron

Basic Usage
===========

```python
from baron import parse, dumps

fst = parse(source_code_string)
source_code_string == dumps(fst)
```

There is a good chance that you'll want to use
[RedBaron](https://github.com/Psycojoker/redbaron) instead of using Baron
directly. Think of Baron as the "bytecode of python source code" and RedBaron
as some sort of usable layer on top of it.

If you don't know what Baron is or don't understand yet why it might be
useful for you, read the [« Why is this important? » section](#why-is-this-important).

Documentation
=============

Baron documentation is available on [Read The Docs](http://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/).

Why is this important?
======================

The usage of a FST might not be obvious at first sight so let's consider a
series of problems to illustrate it. Let's say that you want to write a program that will:

* rename a variable in a source file... without clashing with things that are not a variable (example: stuff inside a string)
* inline a function/method
* extract a function/method from a series of line of code
* split a class into several classes
* split a file into several modules
* convert your whole code base from one ORM to another
* do custom refactoring operation not implemented by IDE/rope
* implement the class browser of smalltalk for python (the whole one where you can edit the code of the methods, not just showing code)

It is very likely that you will end up with the awkward feeling of writing
clumpsy weak code that is very likely to break because you didn't thought about
all the annoying special cases and the formatting keeps bothering you. You may
end up playing with [ast.py](http://docs.python.org/2/library/ast.html) until
you realize that it removes too much information to be suitable for those
situations. You will probably ditch this task as simple too complicated and
really not worth the effort. You are missing a good abstraction that will take
care of all of the code structure and formatting for you so you can concentrate
on your task.

The FST tries to be this abstraction. With it you can now work on a tree which
represents your code with its formatting. Moreover, since it is the exact
representation of your code, modifying it and converting it back to a string
will give you back your code only modified where you have modified the tree.

Said in another way, what I'm trying to achieve with Baron is a paradigm change in
which writing code that will modify code is now a realist task that is worth
the price (I'm not saying a simple task, but a realistic one: it's still a
complex task).

Other
-----

Having a FST (or at least a good abstraction build on it) also makes it easier
to do code generation and code analysis while those two operations are already
quite feasible (using [ast.py](http://docs.python.org/2/library/ast.html)
and a templating engine for example).

Some technical details
======================

Baron produces a FST in the form of JSON (and by JSON I mean Python lists
and dicts that can be dumped into JSON) for maximum interoperability.

Baron FST is quite similar to Python AST with some modifications to be more
intuitive to humans, since Python AST has been made for CPython interpreter.

Since playing directly with JSON is a bit raw I'm going to build an abstraction
on top of it that will looks like BeautifulSoup/jQuery.

State of the project
====================

Currently, Baron has been tested on the top 100 projects and the FST converts
back exactly into the original source code. So, it can be considered quite
stable, but it is far away from having been battle tested.

Since the project is very young and no one is already using it except my
project, I'm open to changes of the FST nodes but I will quickly become
conservative once it gets some adoption and will probably accept to
modify it only once or twice in the future with clear indications on how to
migrate.

**Baron is targeting python 2.[67]**. It has not been tested on python3 but
should be working for most parts (except the new grammar like <code>yield from</code>,
obviously). Baron **runs** under python 2 and python 3.

Tests
=====
Run either `py.test tests/` or `nosetests` in the baron directory.

Community
=========

You can reach us on [irc.freenode.net#baron](https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23baron).

Misc
====
[Old blog post announcing the project.](http://worlddomination.be/blog/2013/the-baron-project-part-1-what-and-why.html) Not that much up to date.


Changelog
=========

0.4 (2014-09-29)
----------------

- new rendering type in the nodes_rendering_order dictionary: string. This
remove an ambiguity where a key could be pointing to a dict or a string, thus
forcing third party tools to do guessing.

0.3.1 (2014-09-04)
------------------

- setup.py wasn't working if wheel wasn't used because the CHANGELOG file
wasn't included in the MANIFEST.in

0.3 (2014-08-21)
----------------

- path becomes a simple list and is easier to deal with
- bounding box allows you to know the left most and right most position
of a node see https://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#bounding-box
- redbaron is classified as supporting python3
https://github.com/Psycojoker/baron/pull/51
- ensure than when a key is a string, it's empty value is an empty string and
not None to avoid breaking libs that use introspection to guess the type of
the key
- key renaming in the FST: "delimiteur" -> "delimiter"
- name_as_name and dotted_as_name node don't have the "as" key anymore as it
was useless (it can be deduce from the state of the "target" key)
- dotted_name node doesn't exist anymore, its existance was unjustified. In
import, from_import and decorator node, it has been replaced from a key to a
dict (with only a list inside of it) to a simple list.
- dumps now accept a strict boolean argument to check the validity of the FST
on dumping, but this isn't that much a public feature and should probably be
changed of API in the futur
- name_as_name and dotted_as_name empty value for target is now an empty string
and not None since this is a string type key
- boundingbox now includes the newlines at the end of a node
- all raised exceptions inherit from a common base exception to ease try/catch
constructions
- Position's left and right functions become properties and thus
attributes
- Position objects can be compared to other Position objects or any
iterables
- make_position and make_bounding_box functions are deleted in favor of
always using the corresponding class' constructor

0.2 (2014-06-11)
----------------

- Baron now provides documentation on https://baron.readthedocs.org
- feature: baron now run in python3 (*but* doesn't implement the full python3
grammar yet) by Pierre Penninckx https://github.com/ibizaman
- feature: drop the usage of ast.py to find print_function, this allow any
version of python to parse any other version of python also by Pierre
Penninckx
- fix: rare bug where a comment end up being confused as an indentation level
- 2 new helpers: show_file and show_node, see https://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#show-file
and https://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#show-node
- new dictionary that provides the informations on how to render a FST node:
nodes_rendering_order see https://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#rendering-the-fst
- new utilities to find a node, see https://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#locate-a-node
- new generic class that provide templates to work on the FST see
https://baron.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#rendering-the-fst

0.1.3 (2014-04-13)
------------------

- set sugar syntaxic notation wasn't handled by the dumper (apparently no one
use this on pypi top 100)

0.1.2 (2014-04-08)
------------------

- baron.dumps now accept a single FST node, it was only working with a list of
FST nodes
- don't add a endl node at the end if not present in the input string
- de-uniformise call_arguments and function_arguments node, this is just
creating more problems that anything else
- fix https://github.com/Psycojoker/redbaron/issues/4
- fix the fact that baron can't parse "{1,}" (but "{1}" is working)

0.1.1 (2014-03-23)
------------------

- It appears that I don't know how to write MANIFEST.in correctly


0.1 (2014-03-22)
----------------

- Init