Web Tree-sitter
===============
[](https://travis-ci.org/tree-sitter/tree-sitter)
WebAssembly bindings to the [Tree-sitter](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter) parsing library.
### Setup
You can download the the `tree-sitter.js` and `tree-sitter.wasm` files from [the latest GitHub release](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/releases/tag/0.14.7) and load them using a standalone script:
```html
```
You can also install [the `web-tree-sitter` module](https://www.npmjs.com/package/web-tree-sitter) from NPM and load it using a system like Webpack:
```js
const Parser = require('web-tree-sitter');
Parser.init().then(() => { /* the library is ready */ });
```
### Basic Usage
First, create a parser:
```js
const parser = new Parser;
```
Then assign a language to the parser. Tree-sitter languages are packaged as individual `.wasm` files (more on this below):
```js
const JavaScript = await Parser.Language.load('/path/to/tree-sitter-javascript.wasm');
parser.setLanguage(JavaScript);
```
Now you can parse source code:
```js
const sourceCode = 'let x = 1; console.log(x);';
const tree = parser.parse(sourceCode);
```
and inspect the syntax tree.
```javascript
console.log(tree.rootNode.toString());
// (program
// (lexical_declaration
// (variable_declarator (identifier) (number)))
// (expression_statement
// (call_expression
// (member_expression (identifier) (property_identifier))
// (arguments (identifier)))))
const callExpression = tree.rootNode.child(1).firstChild;
console.log(callExpression);
// { type: 'call_expression',
// startPosition: {row: 0, column: 16},
// endPosition: {row: 0, column: 30},
// startIndex: 0,
// endIndex: 30 }
```
### Editing
If your source code *changes*, you can update the syntax tree. This will take less time than the first parse.
```javascript
// Replace 'let' with 'const'
const newSourceCode = 'const x = 1; console.log(x);';
tree.edit({
startIndex: 0,
oldEndIndex: 3,
newEndIndex: 5,
startPosition: {row: 0, column: 0},
oldEndPosition: {row: 0, column: 3},
newEndPosition: {row: 0, column: 5},
});
const newTree = parser.parse(newSourceCode, tree);
```
### Parsing Text From a Custom Data Structure
If your text is stored in a data structure other than a single string, you can parse it by supplying a callback to `parse` instead of a string:
```javascript
const sourceLines = [
'let x = 1;',
'console.log(x);'
];
const tree = parser.parse((index, position) => {
let line = sourceLines[position.row];
if (line) return line.slice(position.column);
});
```
### Generate .wasm language files
The following example shows how to generate `.wasm` file for tree-sitter JavaScript grammar.
**IMPORTANT**: [emscripten](https://emscripten.org/docs/getting_started/downloads.html) or [docker](https://www.docker.com/) need to be installed.
First install `tree-sitter-cli` and the tree-sitter language for which to generate `.wasm` (`tree-sitter-javascript` in this example):
```sh
npm install --save-dev tree-sitter-cli tree-sitter-javascript
```
Then just use tree-sitter cli tool to generate the `.wasm`.
```sh
npx tree-sitter build-wasm node_modules/tree-sitter-javascript
```
If everything is fine, file `tree-sitter-javascript.wasm` should be generated in current directory.
#### Running .wasm in Node.js
Notice that executing `.wasm` files in node.js is considerably slower than running [node.js bindings](https://github.com/tree-sitter/node-tree-sitter). However could be useful for testing purposes:
```javascript
const Parser = require('web-tree-sitter');
(async () => {
await Parser.init();
const parser = new Parser();
const Lang = await Parser.Language.load('tree-sitter-javascript.wasm');
parser.setLanguage(Lang);
const tree = parser.parse('let x = 1;');
console.log(tree.rootNode.toString());
})();
```