calmjs.parse 0.9.0

Various parsers for ECMA standards.

calmjs.parse

A collection of parsers and helper libraries for understanding ECMAScript; a partial fork of slimit.

Introduction

For any kind of build system that operates with JavaScript code in conjunction with a module system, the ability to understand what modules a given set of sources require or provide is paramount. As the Calmjs project provides a framework that produces and consume these module definitions, the the ability to have a comprehensive understanding of given JavaScript sources is a given. This goal was originally achieved using slimit, a JavaScript minifier library that also provided a comprehensive parser class that was built using Python Lex-Yacc (i.e. ply).

However, as of mid-2017, it was noted that slimit remained in a minimum state of maintenance for more than four years (its most recent release, 0.8.1, was made 2013-03-26), along with a number of serious outstanding issues have left unattended and unresolved for the duration of that timespan. As the development of the Calmjs framework require those issues to be rectified as soon as possible, a decision to fork the parser portion of slimit was made. This was done in order to cater to the interests current to Calmjs project at that moment in time.

The fork was initial cut from another fork of slimit (specifically lelit/slimit), as it introduced and aggregated a number of bug fixes from various sources. To ensure a better quality control and assurance, a number of problematic changes introduced by that fork were removed. Also, new tests were created to bring coverage to full, and issues reported on the slimit tracker were noted and formalized into test cases where applicable. Finally, grammar rules were updated to ensure better conformance with the ECMA-262 (ES5) specification.

The goal of calmjs.parse is to provide a similar parser API as the parser that slimit had provided. The mangling and minification functionalities as provided by the original has been omitted as they are not relevant to code parsing. A separate package containing those mangling and minifying features as provided by slimit may be released in the future.

Installation

The following command may be executed to source the calmjs.parse wheel from PyPI for installation into the current Python environment.

$ pip install calmjs.parse

As this package uses ply, which produces auto-generated modules that are shipped with the Python wheel for this package, this results in some caveats. The modules at hand contain generated tables for ply; the wheel for this package will be compatible up to ply-3.10, or the latest release available at the time of release of calmjs.parse. If a more recent version of ply becomes available and is installed, the generated tables in this package may become incompatible, thus a manual optimization step outlined later in this document may be required. Alternatively, ply may be downgraded to version 3.10.

Alternative installation methods (for developers, advanced users)

Development is still ongoing with calmjs.parse, for the latest features and bug fixes, the development version may be installed through git like so:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/calmjs/calmjs.parse.git#egg=calmjs.parse

Alternatively, the git repository can be cloned directly and execute python setup.py develop while inside the root of the source directory.

A manual optimization step may need to be performed for platforms and systems that do not have utf8 as their default encoding.

Manual optimization

As lex and yacc require the generation of symbol tables, a way to optimize the performance is to cache the results. For ply, this is done using an autogenerated module. However, the generated file is marked with a version number, as the results may be specific to the installed version of ply. In calmjs.parse this is handled by giving them a name specific to the version of ply and the major Python version, as both together does result in subtle differences in the outputs and expectations of the auto-generated modules.

Typically, the process for this optimization is automatic and a correct symbol table will be generated, however there are cases where this will fail, so for this reason calmjs.parse provide a helper module and executable that can be optionally invoked to ensure that the correct encoding be used to generate that file. Other reasons where this may be necessary is to allow system administrators to do so for their end users, as they may not have write privileges at that level.

To execute the optimizer from the shell, the provided helper script may be used like so:

$ python -m calmjs.parse.parsers.optimize

If warnings appear that warn that tokens are defined but not used, they may be safely ignored.

This step is generally optionally for users who installed this package from PyPI via a Python wheel, provided the caveats as outlined in the installation section are addressed.

Testing the installation

To ensure that the calmjs.parse installation is functioning correctly, the built-in testsuite can be executed by the following:

$ python -m unittest calmjs.parse.tests.make_suite

If there are failures, please file an issue on the issue tracker with the full traceback, and/or the method of installation. Please also remember to include platform specific information, such as Python version, operating system environments, the version of ply that was installed, plus other information related to the issue at hand.

Usage

As this is a parser library, no executable shell commands are provided. There is however a helper function provided at the top level for immediate access to the parsing feature. It may be used like so:

>>> from calmjs.parse import es5
>>> program = es5('''
... // simple program
... var main = function(greet) {
...     var hello = "hello " + greet;
...     return hello;
... };
... console.log(main('world'));
... ''')
>>> program  # for a simple repr-like nested view of the ast
<ES5Program ?children=[
  <VarStatement ?children=[
    <VarDecl identifier=<Identifier ...>, initializer=<FuncExpr ...>>
  ]>,
  <ExprStatement expr=<FunctionCall args=[
    <FunctionCall ...>
  ], identifier=<DotAccessor ...>>>
]>
>>> print(program)  # automatic reconstruction of ast into source
var main = function(greet) {
  var hello = "hello " + greet;
  return hello;
};
console.log(main('world'));

The parser classes are organized under the calmjs.parse.parsers module, with each language being under their own module. A corresponding lexer class with the same name is also provided under the calmjs.parse.lexers module. For the moment, only ES5 support is implemented.

AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) visitor classes are defined under the appropriate named modules under calmjs.parse.visitors; please refer to their docstrings for documentation on their usage. A quick example to show how the es5 visitor may be used to regenerate the source tree back into text for the above example (in fact, the __str__ call shown in the first example generates the output like so).

>>> from calmjs.parse.visitors.es5 import PrettyPrinter
>>> visitor = PrettyPrinter(indent=4)
>>> print(visitor.visit(program))
var main = function(greet) {
    var hello = "hello " + greet;
    return hello;
};
console.log(main('world'));

Note the change in indentation and the lack of comments, as this visitor implementation has their own indentation scheme and the parser currently skips over comments.

Troubleshooting

Instantiation the parser fails with UnicodeEncodeError

For platforms or systems that do not have utf8 configured as the default encoding, the automatic table generation may fail when constructing a parser instance. An example:

>>> from calmjs.parse.parsers import es5
>>> parser = es5.Parser()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
  File "c:\python35\lib\site-packages\ply-3.10-py3.5.egg\ply\lex.py", line 1043, in lex
    lexobj.writetab(lextab, outputdir)
  File "c:\python35\lib\site-packages\ply-3.10-py3.5.egg\ply\lex.py", line 195, in writetab
    tf.write('_lexstatere   = %s\n' % repr(tabre))
  File "c:\python35\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode
    return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u02c1' in position 2488: character maps to <undefined>

A workaround helper script is provided, it may be executed like so:

$ python -m calmjs.parse.parsers.optimize

For more details, refer to the Manual optimization section of this document.

Contribute

• Issue Tracker: https://github.com/calmjs/calmjs.parse/issues

• Source Code: https://github.com/calmjs/calmjs.parse

Legal

The calmjs.parse package is copyright (c) 2017 Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland. The calmjs.parse package is licensed under the MIT license (specifically, the Expat License), which is also the same license that the package slimit was released under.

The lexer, parser, visitor and the other types definitions portions were originally imported from the slimit package; slimit is copyright (c) Ruslan Spivak.

The Calmjs project is copyright (c) 2017 Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland.

Changelog

0.9.0 - 2017-06-09

• Initial release of the fork of slimit.parser and its parent modules as calmjs.parse.

• This release brings in a number of bug fixes that were available via other forks of slimit, with modifications or even a complete revamp.

• Issues addressed includes:

  • rspivak/slimit#52, rspivak/slimit#59, rspivak/slimit#81, rspivak/slimit#90 (relating to conformance of ecma-262 7.6 identifier names)

  • rspivak/slimit#54 (fixed by tracking scope and executable current token in lexer)

  • rspivak/slimit#57, rspivak/slimit#70 (octal encoding (e.g 0), from redapple/slimit@a93204577f)

  • rspivak/slimit#62 (formalized into a unittest that passed)

  • rspivak/slimit#73 (specifically the desire for a better repr; the minifier bits are not relevant to this package)

  • rspivak/slimit#79 (tab module handling was completely reimplemented)

  • rspivak/slimit#82 (formalized into a unittest that passed)

• Include various changes gathered by rspivak/slimit#65, which may be the source of some of the fixes listed above.