strings-js

A small TypeScript library and CLI that reads JavaScript (or TypeScript) and parses its strings into an array.

It uses the TypeScript compiler to build an abstract syntax tree, so it collects real strings from the code and ignores things like text inside comments. It captures three kinds of strings:

• String literals — 'hello', "world"
• Template literals — `hi ${name}` (interpolation slots are shown as ${...})
• Object property keys — the "foo" in { "foo": 1 }

You can feed it either a file path or raw source content — both from code (as a library) and from the command line.

Install

npm install
npm run build

The only runtime dependency is typescript.

Use as a library

import {
  parseStrings,
  parseStringsDetailed,
  parseStringsFromFile,
  parseStringsDetailedFromFile,
} from "strings-js";

// --- From raw source content ---
const code = `const greeting = "hello"; const t = \`hi \${name}\`; const o = { "key": 1 };`;

parseStrings(code);
// => ["hello", "hi ${...}", "key"]

parseStringsDetailed(code);
// => [
//   { value: "hello",     kind: "literal",     line: 1, column: 18 },
//   { value: "hi ${...}", kind: "template",    line: 1, column: 43 },
//   { value: "key",       kind: "propertyKey", line: 1, column: 68 },
// ]

// --- From a file on disk (language inferred from the extension) ---
parseStringsFromFile("./app.js");
parseStringsDetailedFromFile("./module.ts"); // .ts/.tsx/.jsx auto-detected

parseStrings / parseStringsDetailed take raw content; the ...FromFile variants read a path and are thin wrappers around them.

Options

Every function takes an optional second ParseStringsOptions argument:

| Option | Default | Description | | -------------- | ------- | -------------------------------------------------- | | literals | true | Include single/double-quoted string literals | | templates | true | Include template (backtick) literals | | propertyKeys | true | Include string-valued object property keys | | jsx | true | Enable JSX syntax when parsing | | typescript | false | Parse the source as TypeScript | | unique | false | Drop duplicate values, keeping first occurrence | | fileName | — | Label used for the source (does not change parsing)|

parseStrings(code, { propertyKeys: false, unique: true });

For the ...FromFile helpers, typescript and jsx are inferred from the file extension unless you set them explicitly.

Use from the command line

# Parse a file
node dist/cli.js app.js

# Parse raw source passed inline
node dist/cli.js --code 'const a = "hi"; const o = { "k": 1 };' --detailed

# Parse raw source piped on stdin
cat app.js | node dist/cli.js --pretty
node dist/cli.js --stdin < app.js

# Pretty-print with kind + line/column
node dist/cli.js app.js --detailed --pretty

# Write results to a file, de-duplicated
node dist/cli.js app.js --unique -o strings.json

# Parse a TypeScript source file
node dist/cli.js module.ts --ts

Input precedence is --code, then stdin (--stdin/-/a pipe), then a file path. Run node dist/cli.js --help for the full list, including --no-literals, --no-templates, and --no-property-keys to narrow the scope.

During development you can skip the build step with npm run dev -- app.js.

License

MIT