README.md

libuast

Libuast is a Go library exposed as a C (shared) library and implements different algorithms that consume the Babelfish's UAST in order to query, inspect and process it.

Libuast is decoupled from the UAST data structures. This means that the UAST itself can be stored in any native object of the host language. In order to connect the C uast library with the data structure an implementation of the interface must be provided by the bindings.

Features

• XPath queries of UAST
• UAST iterators
• Encoding and decoding of UAST

Supports Linux, Darwin and Windows.

Installation

Check releases for precompiled binaries.

Dependencies

Dependencies:

• Go 1.12+
• gcc (for cgo)
• libcunit1 (optional, for tests)

Ubuntu instructions

sudo snap install --classic go
sudo apt install build-essential libcunit1 libcunit1-dev

For cross-compilation to Windows:

sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64

Windows instructions

WINDOWS.md

Build/Install C API

make

Run the tests

make test

Query language

Any of the node fields can be used for querying, which are mapped in the following way:

• @type is converted to the element name
• @token, if available, is converted to an attribute with token as keyword and the actual token as value. It is also mapped to the text() of the node.
• Every item of the @role field is converted to a role attribute with a role name in CamelCase as a value.
• Every field that stores a value is converted to an attribute.
• @pos fields are mapped to a set of attributes with a <pos-name>-<pos-field> name, for example:
  • start-offset - an offset of the start position (same for the end position)
  • start-line - a line of the start position
  • start-col - a column of the start position
• Every field that stores a node or an array of nodes is mapped to a separate element with a field name as an element name and a set of nodes mapped to children of that node.

which are mapped in to XML in the following way:

<uast:Identifier
    token='A'
    role='Identifier' role='Name'
    Name='A'
	start-offset='7' start-line='3' start-col='1'
	end-offset='8' end-line='3' end-col='2'
>
A
</uast:Identifier>

or for nested nodes:

<uast:Alias
	start-offset='7' start-line='3' start-col='1'
	end-offset='13' end-line='4' end-col='1'
>
    <Name>
        <uast:Identifier role='Identifier' role='Name' Name='A'></uast:Identifier>
    </Name>
    <Node>
        <uast:String role='String' role='Literal' Value='B'></uast:String>
    </Node>
</uast:Alias>

Check the official documentation for example queries.

Implementing the node interface

libuast is built to be easily bindable, and to allow a native data structures (like arrays and maps) for a Node in every language.

That's why the library provides an interface to this Node data structure that must be implemented. Concretely NodeIface, that is used to initialize the Uast struct:

NodeIface iface;
iface.Kind = Kind;
iface.Size = Size;
// ...

Uast *ctx = UastNew(&iface, 0);

NodeIface holds the functions that need the be executed when the library needs to access object fields, array items or individual values.

Here you can see several examples of the Uast:

• C++ node
• Python node
• Go node

Once the Uast context is created, it can be easily used to run xpath queries against the native nodes:

// creating a Uast as explained above
Uast *ctx = CreateContextFromIface();

// get a handle or c pointer for the native node
NodeHandle node = (NodeHandle)pointerToNativeNode;

// consume the Uast API (xpath in this case)
UastIterator *iter = UastFilter(ctx, node, "//NumLiteral");

Running an xpath query

At this point, you might have already created your very first binding of libuast. Let's start playing with real stuff!

XPath querying

XPath allows to filter the whole UAST using the xpath syntax. It can be really useful to extract features from the code and thanks to the annotation system implemented by Babelfish, it can be done in an universal fashion.

In libuast, xpath querying is performed by the UastFilter function. This function takes a pointer to the Uast context, a handle to the root node (a pointer in the simplest case), and the xpath query string. The function returns an iterator of matching nodes.

Here's a complete example:

const char *query = "//*[@role='Import' and @role='Declaration']";

// run the xpath query and check return value
UastIterator *iter = UastFilter(ctx, node, query);

NodeHandle node = 0;
while((node = UastIteratorNext(iter)) != 0) {
    print_node(node);
}

// do not forget to free the iterator afterwards.
UastIteratorFree(iter);

UAST Iterators

The API provides a UastIterator type that can iterate over the UAST in pre-order, post-order, level-order and position-order (the last one is by the node start-offset/start-line/start-col).

Example:

UastIterator *iter = UastIteratorNew(ctx, node, PRE_ORDER);

NodeHandle node = 0;
while((node = UastIteratorNext(iter)) != 0) {
  // ... do something with the node
}

UastIteratorFree(iter);

Contribute

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