CoffeeScript compiler API

Question

I am working in CoffeeScript (writing a Cakefile). I would like to compile some other CoffeeScript files, à la

coffee -o lib -c src

I could launch the above command in a child process, but this approach has cross-platform issues and makes error handling difficult. I'd much rather use an API.

I'd be happy to use the exact functions from command.coffee, but I can't work out how.

Addendum: I see require('coffee-script').compile, which compiles a string to another string. That would still leave me to do the grunt work of looping over files and subfolders and writing the output.

If you too would find a richer API useful, comment on the feature request on Github github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/2386 — Colonel Panic
– Colonel Panic, Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 10:04

Jordan Running · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-28 21:55:52Z

11

The API you're looking for is in coffee-script.coffee. It exports a compile function that does what it says on the tin.

To use command.coffee's run function directly you'd have to first overwrite process.argv with the options you would have passed on the command line.

edited Mar 28, 2012 at 21:55

answered Mar 28, 2012 at 21:48

Jordan Running

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6 Comments

Colonel Panic Over a year ago

Thanks I tried over-writing process.argv but I failed to pull it off. Do you have an example?

Linus Thiel Over a year ago

This works for me: command = require 'coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/command, process.argv.push '-o', 'lib', '-c', 'src', command.run().

Colonel Panic Over a year ago

Another observation run appears to return before it's finished

Jordan Running Over a year ago

@MattHickford Yes it's asynchronous as can be expected in a Node.js package. The source is straightforward—ultimately all compile options call compileScript, and there you can see that it emits "success" and "failure" events. These events pass a task object and on success that object has an output property.

Jordan Running Over a year ago

No, but you can add an event listener e.g. CoffeeScript.on( "success", function( task ) { ... } );, which is just as good.

|

Ricardo Tomasi · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-28 21:49:21Z

7

Just use node's fs API + coffeescript.compile:

fs = require 'fs'
coffee = require 'coffee-script'

fs.readFile 'source.coffee', 'utf8', (err, data) ->
    compiled = coffee.compile data
    fs.writeFile 'source.js', compiled, (err) ->
        console.log "Done."

Also take a look at coffeescript's own Cakefile (uses child processes): https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/blob/master/Cakefile

answered Mar 28, 2012 at 21:49

Ricardo Tomasi

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Colonel Panic · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-13 09:58:15Z

0

Thanks Jordan and Linus I wrote:

 command = require('iced-coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/command')
 process.argv[2..]=['-o','lib','-c','src']
 command.run()

Outstanding issues: the run function returns early and there isn't a callback to report error :\

answered Nov 13, 2013 at 9:58

Colonel Panic

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