js-comint.el (v1.2.0)

Run a JavaScript interpreter in an inferior process window

The first release, js-comint 0.0.1, is hosted on sourceforge but it has not been updated for five years.

Features

• Can select node.js versions using nvm.el
• Use node.js by default.
• When loading file, detect what API to be used automatically
• Based on js-comint hosted on http://js-comint-el.sourceforge.net/

Installation

Direct download of js-comint.el

Place the js-comint.el somewhere say “~/mylisp/”.

Insert below code to “~/.emacs.d/init.el”,

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/mylisp/")
(require 'js-comint)

Using ELPA

Insert below code to “~/.emacs.d/init.el”,

(require 'package)
(package-initialize)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/"))
(package-install 'js-comint)
(require 'js-comint)

Using Cask

Add js-comint to your Cask file:

(depends-on "js-comint")

Windows

On window, you may need below setup:

(setq js-comint-program-command "C:/Program Files/nodejs/node.exe")

Usage

After installation, do `M-x run-js` to create a comint buffer with the JavaScript interpreter.

Please note the directory node_modules is automatically searched and appended into environment variable `NODE_PATH’. So you can use third party javascript without setup. For example, after npm install --save moment, run below command in js-comint shell,

require('moment')().format('YYYY-MM-DD');

You can M-x js-clear before M-x js-send-buffer to get clean output.

In order to get cleaner output when using NodeJS, I suggest add below setup into .emacs,

(defun inferior-js-mode-hook-setup ()
  (add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions 'js-comint-process-output))
(add-hook 'inferior-js-mode-hook 'inferior-js-mode-hook-setup t)

Customization

You can set the `js-comint-program-command’ string and the `js-comint-program-arguments’ list to the executable that runs the JS interpreter and the arguments to pass to it respectively.

E.g., the default is:

;; You can also customize `js-comint-drop-regexp' to filter output
(setq js-comint-program-command "node")
(setq js-comint-program-arguments '("--interactive"))

Note that in the example above, the version of node that is picked up will be the first found in `exec-path’.

But you could use Rhino or SpiderMonkey or whatever you want. E.g. to set up the Rhino JAR downloaded from https://github.com/mozilla/rhino, do

(setq js-comint-program-command "java")
(setq js-comint-program-arguments '("-jar" "/absolute/path/to/rhino/js.jar"))

If you have nvm, you can select the versions of node.js installed and run them. This is done thanks to nvm.el. nvm.el is optional. So you need manually install it.

To enable nvm support, run

(js-do-use-nvm)

The first time you start the JS interpreter with run-js, you will be asked to select a version of node.js. If you want to change version of node js, run (js-select-node-version).

You can add the following couple of lines to your .emacs/init file to take advantage of key bindings for sending things to the JavaScript REPL:

; Remap Elisp's eval-last-sexp (C-x C-e) to eval JavaScript
(define-key js-mode-map [remap eval-last-sexp] #'js-comint-send-last-sexp))
(define-key js-mode-map (kbd "C-c b") 'js-send-buffer))