Category: nodejs

---

This post is an extract of a github repo I’m working on chtefi/react-stack-step-by-step to explain step-by-step from scratch a full reactjs stack

The answer is : by applying some linting on your source code.

Code linting is a set of rules to apply, to enforce some styles and rules into the code, and even check if you’re writing bugs (due to typos mostly).

By applying the same rules on the whole source code, you can, for instance, make sure that everywhere there is no missing semicolons (or that there is not semicolons at all if you don’t like them), that the variables are properly named, that the order of methods to override is fixed, that the constructor is the first method, that the depth of the functions is not more than 4 etc. etc.

Hopefully, we can use some presets created by big tech companies to avoid to set them all manually.
Moreover, if they follow those styles, it’s a good opportunity to follow the same ones.!

Let’s see what is needed in order to apply this linting and configure it as you expect.
Moreoever, we will add some special packages to deal with Reactjs code, because that needs more.

What packages to install to do linting ?

We have multiple choices.

• JSLint : original project
• JSHint : fork of JSLint
• ESLint : new recent alternative (2013), pluggable

We are going to stick with ESLint because it supports Reactjs special linting rules through a plugin eslint-plugin-react.

And because the linting is only necessary for the developers, the npm dependency is installed with --save-dev.

$ npm i -D eslint

How to use it

eslint gives us the command of the same name in ./node_modules/.bin/eslint.
It just takes in parameter a folder or a file on which we want to apply some linting such as :

$ ./node_modules/.bin/eslint src

For instance, if we have some ES6 code in there, doing that could lead to some errors :

src\components\App.js
  1:2  error  Parsing error: Illegal import declaration

src\components\Product.js
  1:2  error  Parsing error: Illegal import declaration

It’s because by default, ESLint does not understand ES6.

Before fixing that, let’s simplify our life, and create a npm script command to run this command quickly.

Add a npm script

To avoid to type the eslint command each time, let’s add a simple npm script :

"scripts": {
  "lint": "eslint src"
  ...

Remember: when npm executes the scripts, it has access to the ./node_modules/.bin folder automatically eslint refers to. No need to add the path in the script.

Now, let’s fix our ESLint.

ESLint + ES6 + JSX

As the documentation states, we need to create a file .eslintrc at the root of the project to set the configuration.

First of all, let’s make it understand imports.

{
  "ecmaFeatures": {
    "modules": true
  }
}

6:2  error  Parsing error: Unexpected token const

Now, it does not understand const. Let’s make it understand ES6.

{
  "ecmaFeatures": {
    "modules": true
  },
+ "env": {
+   "es6": true
+ }
}

25:8  error  Parsing error: Unexpected token <

Now, it does not understand JSX it seems. Let’s make it understand JSX.

{
  "ecmaFeatures": {
+   "jsx": true,
    "modules": true
  },
  "env": {
    "es6": true
  }
}

Boom, it passes without error !
That means it could parse it properly at least.

There is no error, not because the code is already perfect, but because : All rules are disabled by default.

But there are a ton of rules, let’s see how to extend some existing defaults. We are not the first person who want to use it right ?

Extends some default ESLint configuration

It’s recommanded to extend the eslint:recommanded set of rules, to begin with.

But we can also extend some other known ones, such as :

• : want to work at airbnb ? Learn their styles.
• : a nice style overriding some properties of eslint:recommanded. I’m not fan because it forbids semicolons, commas on the last array item, all those useless things I like to write.

To extends those rules, npm i them or use the eslint:recommanded one directly :

{
+ "extends": "eslint:recommended",
  "ecmaFeatures": {
    "jsx": true,
    "modules": true
  },
  "env": {
    "es6": true
  }
}

3:8     error  "Toolbar" is defined but never used      no-unused-vars
19:378  error  Unexpected trailing comma                comma-dangle

Now we have some linting issues.
But it seems ESLint does not understand yet this kind of program :

import Toolbar from './Toolbar.js';
...

The variable Toolbar is used by (translated to React.createElement(Toolbar)), so the no-unused-vars error is not a true error.

To make it understand that the imported components are used in JSX, we need to install the plugin eslint-plugin-react and add a special rule jsx-uses-react from this plugin, that will remove this ESLint false error.

$ npm i -D eslint-plugin-react

{
  "extends": "eslint:recommended",
  "ecmaFeatures": {
    "jsx": true,
    "modules": true
  },
  "env": {
    "es6": true
  },
+ "plugins": [
+   "react"
+ ],
+ "rules": {
+   "react/jsx-uses-react": 1
+ }
}

Tada, we are left with some true linting errors such as :

19:378  error  Unexpected trailing comma  comma-dangle

This one states that you have a line finishing by a trailing comma in object literal and that you should not (because you have a rule that forbids it).

You can also see this kind of error :

6:19  error  "document" is not defined  no-undef

Javascript environments

ESLint doesn’t know what is document, it didn’t found it in the scope. By default, it does not assume the environment is a browser (because it can be a pure nodejs program, where document does not exist). Therefore, we have to specify we are dealing with javascript that’s going to be used in the browser, and that will have access to document, window, console.log and so on.

{
  "extends": "eslint:recommended",
  "ecmaFeatures": {
    "jsx": true,
    "modules": true
  },
  "env": {
    "es6": true,
+   "browser": true
  },
  "plugins": [
    "react"
  ],
  "rules": {
    "react/jsx-uses-react": 1,
  }
}

There are a lot of different environments, you can find them here http://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/configuring.html.

Examples :

• node
• worker
• mocha
• jquery

Each of them exposes certain globals (that ESLint will assume they exist) that you don’t need to specify.
You can find the list here https://github.com/sindresorhus/globals/blob/master/globals.json.

Overriding rules

If I want to allow trailing commas, I can override the rule :

"rules": {
  "react/jsx-uses-react": 1,
+ "comma-dangle": 0
}

For comma-dangle rule :

• 0 means : you don’t care (disabled).
• 1 means : you get a warning if that happens, it’s tolerated (ESLint will still succeed)
• 2 means : ESLint is going to fail if that happens

Some rules accept some options to change their behavior.

For instance, if I want to force trailing commas for multilines, it’s possible :

"rules": {
  "react/jsx-uses-react": 1,
+ "comma-dangle": [ 2, "always-multiline" ]
}

This will generate errors if there is a missing trailing comma on arrays or objects that span multiple lines.

The option has no effect if the code is 0 (disabled).
The available options (if there is) depend on the rule, check http://eslint.org/docs/rules/comma-dangle for instance.

Personally, I like those dangle-commas because that means I can switch the lines order without playing with the end-of-lines.

Anyway, as you saw, it’s very configurable and anybody can match its code style and force it everywhere in it source code.
But that’s not useful only for that, but can help to find bugs before runtime.

Bug finding

The biggest issues when typing Javascript are the typos. Because we often lack a good auto-completion, or we are used to type everything, we do typos. And we find them at runtime, not funny eh?

Linting your code to find those typos is a big win :

38:34  error  "decription" is not defined              no-undef

Typo !

It’s never a good idea to disable the rule no-undef, you can understand why.

More Babel syntax available thanks to babel-eslint

ESLint uses espree to parse ES6.
But we are using Babel, and Babel handles some features such as the spread notation that are not handled by espree :

const obj = { a: 1, ...{ b: 2, c: 3 } };

ESLint won’t be able to parse that :

19:18  error  Parsing error: Unexpected token ..

Meaning we need to plug the Babel parser to make it understand.
Hopefully, it’s planned and pretty straightforward, just install this package :

$ npm i -D 

We install the latest beta because it is using Babel 6

And define Babel as the parser of ESLint (that will be our last update to .eslintrc) :

{
  "extends": "eslint:recommended",
  "ecmaFeatures": {
    "jsx": true,
    "modules": true
  },
  "parser": "babel-eslint",
  "env": {
    "es6": true,
    "browser": true
  },
  "plugins": [
    "react"
  ],
  "rules": {
    "react/jsx-uses-react": 1,
    "comma-dangle": 0
  }
}

No more syntax error.

It’s quite standard to use this plugin nowadays, because most Javascript projects are using Babel, thus, you always want to parse your code source with Babel, for any third-party app working with it.

Now, you have a proper ESLint configuration, you can code properly and invite people to code with you. You are sure they will follow the style and conventions you enforced.

It’s often a good opportunity to check the linting when building or publishing your package, for instance, in package.json‘s "scripts":

  "compile": "npm run lint && webpack",

If an error occurs, webpack won’t be executed.

Some common errors

Let’s quickly go through some classic linting errors :

• "Toolbar" is defined but never used | no-unused-vars : if you’re using it won’t find it unless you are using react plugin in ESLint.
• "items" is defined but never used | no-unused-vars : a plain js variable you are not using, remove it
• Unexpected var, use let or const instead | no-var : var is evil
• Strings must use singlequote | quotes : prefer ' over "
• Unexpected trailing comma | comma-dangle : the famous trailing comma at the end of multilines
• Extra semicolon | semi : if you want or don’t want semicolon at the end of statements

As you understood, the keyword on the right is the code you want to look for to understand what it means or to override it as you wish.

In-code ESLint hints

We only deal with a single file .eslintrc for now, meaning it’s global to all our source code.

But sometimes, you want to make some exception, mostly because you added a hack somewhere.
That generates you a linting warning or error and you just want ESLint to ignore it.

You can add special comment in your code to talk to ESLint :

// eslint-disable-line

/*eslint-disable */
... ugl-, err, hacky code ...
/*eslint-enable */

Your text editor / IDE supports linting on-the-fly

Last but not least, every good text-editors or IDEs have a plugin to automatically apply linting to your code when typing, and display a marker next to the line if something is wrong : because you don’t want to check back your console and re-execute the full linting each time you write some lines.

Check your IDE doc for more info.

• Sublime Text plugin
• Atom
• WebStorm
• Visual Studio
• …

In my case, I’m using the best text editor aka Sublime Text, you need to install :

• SublimeLinter
• SublimeLinter-contrib-eslint

This is what you can see in your editor :

Have fun !