Dependent

This project is still on active development. The API *might change without further notice.

Dependent is a simple utility CLI to find out which files in your NodeJS-based projects are using a certain dependency. 🚀

Features

• 📦 Analyze dependency usage from all files in your project.
• 🚀 Blazing fast file parsing.
• 📁 Configurable path, analyze files that are actually relevant.
• ☑️ Failsafe parsing mode, no more failure caused by single file error.
• 📈 Expanding language support.

Language Support

dependent is able to parse files with the following extensions:

1. Standard JavaScript files, .js
2. ESModules, .mjs
3. TypeScript files, .ts
4. React Extended JavaScript and TypeScript, .jsx and .tsx
5. Vue Single File Components, .vue (.js and .ts scripts only)
6. Svelte Single File Components, .svelte
7. Astro Components, .astro

More language support are incoming! Submit your language support ideas here

Want to help dependent to be able to parse your favorite files? Submit a pull request

Installation

You can install dependent globally with your favorite package manager. Below is the example of installation with npm.

npm install -g @namchee/dependent

Alternatively, you can execute dependent without installing it by using npx. Below is the example of executing dependent with npx

npx @namchee/dependent foo

This package can only be executed on NodeJS 12 or later.

Usage

Make sure that you have a working NodeJS installation! Refer to this instruction about how to setup NodeJS on your machine

dependent can be executed by your favorite terminal by executing dependent and supplying the name of the package that you want to analyze. For example:

# Which files that requires `express` in my project?
dependent express

By default, dependent will try to parse all supported files - except node_modules - in your project directory. To configure dependent to only scan specific files, dependent accepts an extra argument called files which is a list of glob patterns that you want to analyze. For example

# Only analyze TypeScript files in the `src` directory
dependent express src/**/*.ts

After the command is given, dependent will produce a list of dependant files in your terminal. For example

✔ Analysis completed successfully

📦 There are 17 files in this project that depends on 'phaser'

📁 TypeScript Files
└── index.ts:1 → src/index.ts
└── assets.ts:1 → src/utils/assets.ts
└── background.ts:1 → src/utils/background.ts
└── cherry.ts:1 → src/objects/cherry.ts
└── flyer.ts:1 → src/objects/flyer.ts
└── game.ts:1 → src/scenes/game.ts
└── mushroom.ts:1 → src/objects/mushroom.ts
└── pause.ts:1 → src/scenes/pause.ts
└── player.ts:1 → src/objects/player.ts
└── preload.ts:1 → src/scenes/preload.ts
└── result.ts:1 → src/scenes/result.ts
└── saw.ts:1 → src/objects/saw.ts
└── spike.ts:1 → src/objects/spike.ts
└── splash.ts:1 → src/scenes/splash.ts
└── title.ts:1 → src/scenes/title.ts
└── trophy.ts:1 → src/objects/trophy.ts
└── ui.ts:1 → src/utils/ui.ts

Congratulation, you've used dependent successfully! 🎉

CLI Reference

Required Arguments

package

string

Dependency name to be analyzed. Must be defined in package.json and installed in node_modules.

Optional Arguments

files

string[]

A list of glob patterns that specifies the directories to be analyzed. Space separated.

For example, the argument below will make dependent to analyze all JavaScript files that depends on express in src and lib directory.

dependent express src/**/*.js lib/**/*.js

Flags

--help, -h

Show the help menu.

--silent, -s

Suppress all parsing errors. Default: false

--table, -t

Outputs the result in table-style format instead of line per line format. Default false

FAQ

My vue files cannot be parsed. Help!

dependent will only support Vue 3 projects. I don't plan to add Vue 2 support as Vue 3 is already stable. Feel free to create PR for this though!

dependent does not support TypeScript on Svelte files!

Svelte compiler won't parse anything that is not a JavaScript. Technically, this can be mitigated by doing preprocessing steps like compilation or transpilation. However, this may lead to inaccurate analysis as the code changes which leads to line number changes. We are still looking for the best solution for this.

Motivation

It's Friday! Since tomorrow is free, you want to finish your work as soon as possible and enjoy your temporary holiday.After some refactoring, you realized package x is not used anymore in the files your refactored in your NodeJS based project. Realizing this, you proceed to execute npm uninstall x and then the uninstallation completed successfully.

Sadly, you don't realize that x is actually imported by another files that you didn't touch at all. Your project now breaks by your careless mistake 💥.

The above scenario is fine for small projects since they are easier to test and execute (and compile, if you're using a superset of JavaScript). But, what about big projects where it took so long to execute and compile? What about dynamic imports in not-fully-tested projects where the code may fail silently? What if there's a new team member who want to get onboard quickly but getting stuck on understanding why and where a dependency is needed?

This utility aims to fix those issues by automatically analyzing dependency usage in your projects and produce human-readable logs. Focus on your actual code, not on your dependency management. Let dependent analyze what dependency is actually needed and what isn't.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.