Expression Namer

This library provides plausible names for JavaScript expressions. For example, given the expression view.width good names might be "width" and "viewWidth". This could potentially be used in part to build an IDE's "extract variable" feature, or any feature that requires source code transformation.

Install

Via npm:

$ npm install expression-namer

Usage

This library is designed to be used with the AST nodes generated by esprima. Here's an example of using esprima to get the names suggested above for view.width:

> allNamesForExpression = require('expression-namer').allNamesForExpression
> parse = require('esprima').parse
> allNamesForExpression(parse('view.width').body[0].expression)
[ 'width', 'viewWidth' ]

Note that we did not use the root object returned by parse. That is because that node is of type Program, which is not an expression. We needed to get the program's body's (.body) first statement's ([0], an ExpressionStatement) expression (.expression).

This library can be used with all kinds of expressions, and has special handling for some types. For example, CallExpressions like getFirstPersonById(1) are treated specially:

> allNamesForExpression = require('expression-namer').allNamesForExpression
> parse = require('esprima').parse
> allNamesForExpression(parse('getFirstPersonById(1)').body[0].expression)
[ 'firstPerson', 'result', 'getFirstPersonByIdResult' ]

Notice that the "get" verb and the "ById" prepositional phrase are removed from the preferred expression name result.