grunt-contrib-jshint

What is grunt-contrib-jshint?

grunt-contrib-jshint is a Grunt plugin for running JSHint, a tool that helps to detect errors and potential problems in JavaScript code. It allows you to integrate JSHint into your Grunt build process, enabling automated code quality checks.

What are grunt-contrib-jshint's main functionalities?

Basic JSHint Task

This feature allows you to define a basic JSHint task in your Gruntfile. It specifies the files to be linted and sets JSHint options, such as ECMAScript version.

{
  "grunt.initConfig": {
    "jshint": {
      "files": ['Gruntfile.js', 'src/**/*.js', 'test/**/*.js'],
      "options": {
        "esversion": 6
      }
    }
  },
  "grunt.loadNpmTasks": "grunt-contrib-jshint",
  "grunt.registerTask": ["default", ["jshint"]]
}

Custom JSHint Reporter

This feature allows you to use a custom reporter for JSHint, such as 'jshint-stylish', to format the output of linting results in a more readable manner.

{
  "grunt.initConfig": {
    "jshint": {
      "files": ['Gruntfile.js', 'src/**/*.js', 'test/**/*.js'],
      "options": {
        "reporter": require('jshint-stylish')
      }
    }
  },
  "grunt.loadNpmTasks": "grunt-contrib-jshint",
  "grunt.registerTask": ["default", ["jshint"]]
}

JSHint with Custom Configuration File

This feature allows you to specify a custom JSHint configuration file (.jshintrc) to define your linting rules and options.

{
  "grunt.initConfig": {
    "jshint": {
      "files": ['Gruntfile.js', 'src/**/*.js', 'test/**/*.js'],
      "options": {
        "jshintrc": '.jshintrc'
      }
    }
  },
  "grunt.loadNpmTasks": "grunt-contrib-jshint",
  "grunt.registerTask": ["default", ["jshint"]]
}

Other packages similar to grunt-contrib-jshint

eslint

ESLint is a popular linting tool for JavaScript and TypeScript. It is highly configurable and supports a wide range of plugins and rules. Compared to grunt-contrib-jshint, ESLint offers more flexibility and a larger ecosystem of plugins.

jscs

JSCS (JavaScript Code Style) is a code style linter for JavaScript. It focuses on enforcing coding conventions and style guidelines. While JSHint checks for potential errors and code quality, JSCS is more focused on code style.

tslint

TSLint is a linter for TypeScript code. It helps to enforce coding standards and catch potential errors in TypeScript projects. While grunt-contrib-jshint is for JavaScript, TSLint is specifically designed for TypeScript.

README

grunt-contrib-jshint v0.9.0

Validate files with JSHint.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.0

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-contrib-jshint --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-jshint');

Jshint task

Run this task with the grunt jshint command.

Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.

For more explanations of the lint errors JSHint will throw at you please visit jslinterrors.com.

Options

Any specified option will be passed through directly to JSHint, thus you can specify any option that JSHint supports. See the JSHint documentation for a list of supported options.

A few additional options are supported:

globals

Type: Object
Default: null

A map of global variables, with keys as names and a boolean value to determine if they are assignable. This is not a standard JSHint option, but is passed into the JSHINT function as its third argument. See the JSHint documentation for more information.

jshintrc

Type: String or true
Default: null

If set to true, no config will be sent to jshint and jshint will search for .jshintrc files relative to the files being linted.

If a filename is specified, options and globals defined therein will be used. The jshintrc file must be valid JSON and looks something like this:

{
  "curly": true,
  "eqnull": true,
  "eqeqeq": true,
  "undef": true,
  "globals": {
    "jQuery": true
  }
}

Be aware that jshintrc settings are not merged with your Grunt options.

extensions

Type: String
Default: ''

A list of non-dot-js extensions to check.

ignores

Type: Array
Default: null

A list of files and dirs to ignore. This will override your .jshintignore file if set and does not merge.

force

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Set force to true to report JSHint errors but not fail the task.

reporter

Type: String
Default: null

Allows you to modify this plugins output. By default it will use a built-in Grunt reporter. Set the path to your own custom reporter or to one of the built-in JSHint reporters: jslint or checkstyle.

See also: Writing your own JSHint reporter.

You can also use an external reporter. For example jshint-stylish:

$ npm install --save-dev jshint-stylish

options: {
    reporter: require('jshint-stylish')
}

reporterOutput

Type: String
Default: null

Specify a filepath to output the results of a reporter. If reporterOutput is specified then all output will be written to the given filepath instead of printed to stdout.

Usage examples

Wildcards

In this example, running grunt jshint:all (or grunt jshint because jshint is a multi task) will lint the project's Gruntfile as well as all JavaScript files in the lib and test directories and their subdirectores, using the default JSHint options.

// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
  jshint: {
    all: ['Gruntfile.js', 'lib/**/*.js', 'test/**/*.js']
  }
});

Linting before and after concatenating

In this example, running grunt jshint will lint both the "beforeconcat" set and "afterconcat" sets of files. This is not ideal, because dist/output.js may get linted before it gets created via the grunt-contrib-concat plugin concat task.

In this case, you should lint the "beforeconcat" files first, then concat, then lint the "afterconcat" files, by running grunt jshint:beforeconcat concat jshint:afterconcat.

// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
  concat: {
    dist: {
      src: ['src/foo.js', 'src/bar.js'],
      dest: 'dist/output.js'
    }
  },
  jshint: {
    beforeconcat: ['src/foo.js', 'src/bar.js'],
    afterconcat: ['dist/output.js']
  }
});

Specifying JSHint options and globals

In this example, custom JSHint options are specified. Note that when grunt jshint:uses_defaults is run, those files are linted using the default options, but when grunt jshint:with_overrides is run, those files are linted using merged task/target options.

// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
  jshint: {
    options: {
      curly: true,
      eqeqeq: true,
      eqnull: true,
      browser: true,
      globals: {
        jQuery: true
      },
    },
    uses_defaults: ['dir1/**/*.js', 'dir2/**/*.js'],
    with_overrides: {
      options: {
        curly: false,
        undef: true,
      },
      files: {
        src: ['dir3/**/*.js', 'dir4/**/*.js']
      },
    }
  },
});

Ignoring specific warnings

If you would like to ignore a specific warning:

[L24:C9] W015: Expected '}' to have an indentation at 11 instead at 9.

You can toggle it by prepending - to the warning id as an option:

grunt.initConfig({
  jshint: {
    ignore_warning: {
      options: {
        '-W015': true,
      },
      src: ['**/*.js'],
    },
  },
});

Release History

• 2014-03-12   v0.9.0   Replace deprecated grunt.util._.clone with Object.create() Replace deprecated grunt.util.hooker with hooker lib Enhancing the readability of the output. Reporter output is relative to the output file. Pass jshint options to the external reporter.
• 2013-12-25   v0.8.0   Update to jshint 2.4.0.
• 2013-11-16   v0.7.2   Only print file name once per error.
• 2013-10-31   v0.7.1   Ability to set jshintrc option to true to use jshint's native ability for finding .jshintrc files relative to the linted files.
• 2013-10-23   v0.7.0   Update to jshint 2.3.0.
• 2013-10-23   v0.6.5   Fix output when maxerr is low.
• 2013-08-29   v0.6.4   jshintrc now loaded by jshint allowing comments.
• 2013-08-15   v0.6.3   Fix module location for jshint 2.1.10.
• 2013-07-29   v0.6.2   Update to jshint 2.1.7.
• 2013-07-27   v0.6.1   Peg jshint to 2.1.4 until breaking changes in 2.1.5 are fixed.
• 2013-06-02   v0.6.0   Dont always succeed the task when using a custom reporter. Bump jshint to 2.1.3.
• 2013-05-22   v0.5.4   Fix default reporter to show offending file.
• 2013-05-19   v0.5.3   Performance: Execute the reporter once rather than per file.
• 2013-05-18   v0.5.2   Fix printing too many erroneous ignored file errors.
• 2013-05-17   v0.5.1   Fix for when only 1 file is lint free.
• 2013-05-17   v0.5.0   Bump to jshint 2.0. Add support for .jshintignore files and ignores option Add support for extensions option. Add support for custom reporters and output report to a file.
• 2013-04-08   v0.4.3   Fix evaluation of predef option when it's an object.
• 2013-04-08   v0.4.2   Avoid wiping force option when jshintrc is used.
• 2013-04-06   v0.4.1   Fix to allow object type for deprecated predef.
• 2013-04-04   v0.4.0   Revert task level options to override jshintrc files.
• 2013-03-13   v0.3.0   Bump to JSHint 1.1.0. Add force option to report JSHint errors but not fail the task. Add error/warning code to message. Allow task level options to override jshintrc file.
• 2013-02-26   v0.2.0   Bump to JSHint 1.0
• 2013-02-15   v0.1.1   First official release for Grunt 0.4.0.
• 2013-01-18   v0.1.1rc6   Updating grunt/gruntplugin dependencies to rc6. Changing in-development grunt/gruntplugin dependency versions from tilde version ranges to specific versions.
• 2013-01-09   v0.1.1rc5   Updating to work with grunt v0.4.0rc5. Switching to this.filesSrc api.
• 2012-10-18   v0.1.0   Work in progress, not yet officially released.

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Task submitted by "Cowboy" Ben Alman

This file was generated on Wed Mar 12 2014 10:07:58.