@codepatch/html

Make small changes to your HTML code the easy way

Installation

npm install @codepatch/html

IMPORTANT: @codepatch/html is an ESM-only package. Read more.

Motivation

@codepatch/html is the ideal tool for programmatically making small & simple modifications to your HTML code in JavaScript. It works by parsing the code into an AST and then overriding parts of it. Learn more about the motivation behind Codepatch in the main repository.

As an introducing example, let's make all text in a document uppercase:

import { modify } from '@codepatch/html'

const code = `<p>hello<br>world!</p>`

const result = modify(code, (node, { source, override }) => {
  if (node.type === 'text') {
    override(source().toUpperCase())
  }
})

console.log(result.code)

Output:

<p>HELLO<br />WORLD!</p>

Note that Codepatch is not a transpiler, so it's not ideal for large or complex changes, you'd want something like Cheerio for that.

Usage

How it Works

function modify(code, options = {}, manipulator)

Transform the code string with the function manipulator, returning an output object.

For every node in the AST, manipulator(node, helpers) is called. The recursive walk is an in-order, depth-first traversal, so children are handled before their parents. This makes it easier to write manipulators that perform nested transformations as transforming parents often requires transforming their children first anyway.

The modify() return value is an object with two properties:

• code – contains the transformed source code
• map – holds the resulting source map object, as generated by magic-string

Type casting a Codepatch result object to a string will return its source code.

Pro Tip: Don't know what an HTML AST looks like? Have a look at astexplorer.net and select the "HTML" language with the "htmlparser2" parser to get an idea.

Options

All options are, as the name says, optional. If you want to provide an options object, its place is between the code string and the manipulator function.

htmlparser2 Options

Any options for the underlying htmlparser2 can be passed to options.parser.htmlparser2:

const options = {
  parser: {
    htmlparser2: {
      decodeEntities: false
    }
  }
}

modify('→', options, (node, helpers) => {
  if (node.type === 'text') {
    // node.data will be "→" instead of "→"
  }
})

The same goes for domhandler options which can be passed to options.parser.domhandler

Source Maps

Codepatch uses magic-string under the hood to generate source maps for your code modifications. You can pass its source map options as options.sourceMap:

const options = {
  sourceMap: {
    hires: true
  }
}

modify(code, options, (node, helpers) => {
  // Create a high-resolution source map
})

Helpers

The helpers object passed to the manipulator function exposes three methods. All of these methods handle the current AST node (the one that has been passed to the manipulator as its first argument).

However, each of these methods takes an AST node as an optional first parameter if you want to access other nodes.

Example:

modify('<p>hello world</p>', (node, { source }) => {
  if (node.type === 'tag') {
    // `node` refers to the p tag
    source() // returns "<p>hello world</p>"
    source(node.children[0]) // returns "hello world"
  }
})

source()

Return the source code for the given node, including any modifications made to child nodes:

modify('hello', (node, { source, override }) => {
  if (node.type === 'text') {
    source() // returns "hello"
    override('world')
    source() // returns "world"
  }
})

override(replacement)

Replace the source of the affected node with the replacement string:

const result = modify('<p>hello<br>world</p>', (node, { source, override }) => {
  if (node.type === 'tag' && node.name === 'p') {
    const innerHtml = node.children.map(child => source(child)).join('')
    override(innerHtml)
  }
})

console.log(result.code)

Output:

hello<br>world

parent(levels = 1)

From the starting node, climb up the syntax tree levels times. Getting an ancestor node of the program root yields undefined.

modify('<p>hello <b>world</b></p>', (node, { parent }) => {
  if (node.kind === 'text' && node.data === 'world') {
    // `node` refers to the `world` text node
    parent() // same as parent(1), refers to the `b` tag
    parent(2) // refers to the `p` tag
    parent(3) // refers to the document as a whole (root node)
    parent(4) // yields `undefined`, same as parent(5), parent(6) etc.
  }
})

External Helper Access

If you want to extract manipulation behavior into standalone functions, you can import the helpers directly from the @codepatch/html package, where they are not bound to a specific node:

import { source, override } from '@codepatch/html'

// Standalone function, removes elements with no content
const removeEmpty = node => {
  if (
    Array.isArray(node.children) &&
    node.children.every(node => source(node).length === 0)
  ) {
    override(node, '')
  }
}

// ...

import { modify } from '@codepatch/html'

const result = modify(
  '<p>hello <strong><span></span></strong>world</p>',
  node => {
    removeEmpty(node)
  }
)

console.log(result.code)

Output:

<p>hello world</p>

Asynchronous Manipulations

The manipulator function may return a Promise. If it does, Codepatch will wait for that to resolve, making the whole modify() function return a Promise resolving to the result object (instead of returning the result object directly):

const code = `
<div>
  <embed type="replace" src="logo.svg" />
</div>
`

const deferredResult = modify(code, async (node, { source, override }) => {
  if (
    node.type === 'tag' &&
    node.name === 'embed' &&
    node.attribs.type === 'replace'
  ) {
    // Replace all embed[type=replace] elements with their actual content

    // Get the URL
    const url = node.attribs.src

    // Fetch the URL's contents
    const contents = await fetch(url).then(response => response.text())

    // Replace the embed with the fetched contents
    override(contents)
  }
})

// Result is not available immediately, we need to await it
deferredResult.then(result => {
  console.log(result.code)
})

Output:

const content = `
<div>
  <svg>...</svg>
</div>
`

Note: You have to return a Promise if you want to commit updates asynchronously. Once the manipulator function is done running, any override() calls originating from it will throw an error.

Related

@codepatch/html is part of the Codepatch family of tools. Codepatch is a collection of tools that make it easy to programmatically make simple modifications to code of various languages.

Check out the Codepatch repository to find tools for other languages or information about how to write your own Codepatch modifier.