Expand description
§JavaScript Engine in Rust
A JavaScript engine implementation written in Rust, providing a complete JavaScript runtime with support for modern language features.
§Features
§Core JavaScript Features
- Variables and Scoping:
let,const,vardeclarations - Data Types: Numbers, strings, booleans, objects, arrays, functions, classes
- Control Flow:
if/else, loops (for,while,do-while),switch,try/catch/finally - Functions: Regular functions, arrow functions, async/await
- Classes: Class definitions, inheritance, static methods/properties, getters/setters
- Promises: Promise creation, resolution, async/await syntax
- Destructuring: Array and object destructuring
- Template Literals: String interpolation
- Optional Chaining: Safe property access (
?.) - Nullish Coalescing:
??operator and assignments (??=) - Logical Assignments:
&&=,||=operators
§Built-in Objects and APIs
- Array: Full array methods and static constructors
- Object: Property manipulation, prototype chain
- String: String methods and UTF-16 support
- Number: Number parsing and formatting
- Math: Mathematical functions and constants
- Date: Date/time handling with chrono integration
- RegExp: Regular expressions with regex crate
- JSON: JSON parsing and stringification
- Console: Logging and debugging utilities
- OS: File system operations, path manipulation
- File: File I/O operations
§Advanced Features
- Modules: Import/export system with
import * as name from "module" - Event Loop: Asynchronous task scheduling and execution
- Memory Management: Reference counting and garbage collection
- FFI Integration: C-compatible API similar to QuickJS
§Installation
Add this to your Cargo.toml:
[dependencies]
javascript = "0.1.0"§Usage
§Basic Evaluation
use javascript::evaluate_script;
let result = evaluate_script(r#"
let x = 42;
let y = x * 2;
y + 10
"#).unwrap();
match result {
javascript::Value::Number(n) => println!("Result: {}", n), // Output: Result: 94
_ => println!("Unexpected result"),
}§Using Built-in Modules
use javascript::evaluate_script;
let result = evaluate_script(r#"
import * as console from "console";
import * as os from "os";
console.log("Hello from JavaScript!");
let cwd = os.getcwd();
cwd
"#).unwrap();§Command Line Interface
The crate provides an example CLI binary with REPL support:
§js - Command-line interface with REPL
cargo run --example js -- -e "console.log('Hello World!')"
cargo run --example js script.js
cargo run --example js # no args -> enter persistent REPL (state is retained across inputs)§API Reference
§Core Functions
evaluate_script(code: &str) -> Result<Value, JSError>: Evaluate JavaScript codeevaluate_script_async(code: &str) -> Result<Value, JSError>: Evaluate with async supporttokenize(code: &str) -> Result<Vec<Token>, JSError>: Lexical analysis
§FFI Interface (QuickJS-compatible)
JS_NewRuntime() -> *mut JSRuntime: Create a new runtimeJS_NewContext(rt: *mut JSRuntime) -> *mut JSContext: Create a contextJS_Eval(ctx, code, len, filename, flags) -> JSValue: Evaluate codeJS_NewString(ctx, str) -> JSValue: Create a string valueJS_DefinePropertyValue(ctx, obj, atom, val, flags) -> i32: Define object property
§Value Types
The engine uses a Value enum to represent JavaScript values. See the source code for the complete definition, which includes variants for numbers, strings, objects, functions, promises, and more.
§Architecture
The engine consists of several key components:
- Parser: Converts JavaScript source code into an AST
- Evaluator: Executes the AST in a managed environment
- Object System: Reference-counted objects with prototype chains
- Memory Management: Custom allocators and garbage collection
- FFI Layer: C-compatible interface for embedding
- Built-in Modules: Standard library implementations
§Testing
Run the test suite:
cargo testRun with logging:
RUST_LOG=debug cargo test§Performance
The engine is optimized for:
- Fast parsing and evaluation
- Efficient memory usage with Rc<RefCell<>>
- Minimal allocations during execution
- QuickJS-compatible FFI for high-performance embedding
§Limitations
- No JIT compilation (interpreted only)
- Limited browser API compatibility
- Some ES6+ features may be incomplete
- Error handling could be more robust
§Contributing
Contributions are welcome! Areas for improvement:
- JIT compilation support
- More comprehensive test coverage
- Browser API compatibility
- Performance optimizations
- Additional language features
§License
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
§Acknowledgments
- Inspired by the QuickJS JavaScript engine
- Built with Rust’s powerful type system and memory safety guarantees
- Uses several excellent Rust crates:
regex,chrono,serde_json, etc.
Structs§
- JSArray
Buffer - JSData
View - JSError
- JSObject
Data - JSTyped
Array - Repl
- A small persistent REPL environment wrapper.
Enums§
Functions§
- evaluate_
script - get_
prop_ env - initialize_
global_ constructors - Initialize global built-in constructors in the environment
- obj_
get_ value - parse_
expression - parse_
object_ destructuring_ pattern - parse_
statement - parse_
statements - tokenize