javascript-to-ezjs converts a JavaScript string into a JSON-like data structure that you can manipulate. See an-expression.

Rather than attempting to parse every possible JavaScript program, it only understands a very small subset of language features, and it forces you to be very careful with syntax.

Allowed expressions

• variable assignment
• variable references
• function calls
• function literals
• string literals
• number literals
• object literals
• booleans

That's it. Notably missing right now are loops, conditionals, constructors, and methods. Some of these may be added later to the extent we can do so without adding complexity.

String, function, and object literals on new lines

You can use variables, functions, numbers, and booleans as inline function arguments (setCount(42, true)) but you must put strings and functions on their own line:

function() {
  site.addRoute(
    "get",
    "/foo/:bar",
    function(voxel) {
      ...
    }
  )
}

Same applies to object literals, which must be confined to a single line.

This makes parsing simpler.

Why

We needed a simple JavaScript importer for an-expression.

JavaScript has been adding language features like the kitchen sink lately. This has left an opening in the market for a language with few features that runs on every device. There is a subset of JavaScript which still serves that purpose. This module is a straw man attempting to define that subset.

There may be unseen benefits to having a language subset that is incredibly easy to parse, without grammatical ambiguities.

This allows us to use JavaScript to serialize/deserialize anExpression. JavaScript is a little more compact than the raw anExpression JSON.