Getting All Variables In Scope

Question

Is there a way to get all variables that are currently in scope in javascript

User · Accepted Answer

No   In scope  variables are determined by the  scope chain   which is not accessible programmatically   For detail  quite a lot of it   check out the ECMAScript  JavaScript  specification  Here s a link to the official page where you can download the canonical spec  a PDF   and here s one to the official  linkable HTML version   Update based on your comment to Camsoft  The variables in scope for your event function are determined by where you define your event function  not how they call it  But  you may find useful information about what s available to your function via this and arguments by doing something along the lines of what KennyTM pointed out  for  var propName in        since that will tell you what s available on various objects provided to you  this and arguments  if you re not sure what arguments they give you  you can find out via the arguments variable that s implicitly defined for every function    So in addition to whatever s in-scope because of where you define your function  you can find out what else is available by other means by doing   var n  arg  name  alert  typeof this       typeof this   for  name in this        alert  this     name          this name      for  n   0  n  lt  arguments length    n        arg   arguments n       alert  typeof arguments     n            typeof arg       for  name in arg            alert  arguments     n          name          arg name               You can expand on that to get more useful information    Instead of that  though  I d probably use a debugger like Chrome s dev tools  even if you don t normally use Chrome for development  or Firebug  even if you don t normally use Firefox for development   or Dragonfly on Opera  or  F12 Developer Tools  on IE  And read through whatever JavaScript files they provide you  And beat them over the head for proper docs   -

User · Answer

You can t   Variables  identifiers of function declarations and arguments for function code  are bound as properties of the Variable Object  which is not accesible   See also    Scope Chain and Identifier Resolution

User · Answer

I made a fiddle implementing  essentially  above ideas outlined by iman  Here is how it looks when you mouse over the second ipsum in return ipsum ipsum -        The variables which are in scope are highlighted where they are declared  with different colors for different scopes   The lorem with red border is a shadowed variable  not in scope  but be in scope if the other lorem further down the tree wouldn t be there    I m using esprima library to parse the JavaScript  and estraverse  escodegen  escope  utility libraries on top of esprima   The  heavy lifting  is done all by those libraries  the most complex being esprima itself  of course    How it works  ast   esprima parse sourceString   range  true  sourceType   script       makes the abstract syntax tree  Then   analysis   escope analyze ast     generates a complex data structure encapsulating information about  all the scopes in the program  The rest is gathering together the information encoded in that analysis object  and the abstract syntax tree itself   and making an interactive coloring scheme out of it   So the correct answer is actually not  no   but  yes  but   The  but  being a big one  you basically have to rewrite significant parts of the chrome browser  and it s devtools  in JavaScript  JavaScript is a Turing complete language  so of course that is possible  in principle  What is impossible is doing the whole thing without using the entirety of your source code  as a string  and then doing highly complex stuff with that

User · Answer

If you just want to inspect the variables manually to help debug  just fire up the debugger   debugger   Straight into the browser console

User · Answer

Yes and no    No  in almost every situation   Yes   but only in a limited manner  if you want to check the global scope   Take the following example   var a   1  b   2  c   3   for   var i in window         console log i  typeof window i   window i        Which outputs  amongst 150  other things  the following   getInterface function getInterface   i string i     lt - there it is  c number 3 b number 2 a number 1     lt - and another  firebug object Object firebug 1 4 5 element div  firebugConsole  Firebug command line does not support   0    Firebug command line does not support   1    FirebugCommandLine object Object hasDuplicate boolean false   So it is possible to list some variables in the current scope  but it is not reliable  succinct  efficient  or easily accessible   A better question is why do you want to know what variables are in scope

User · Answer

How much time do you have  If you hate your cpu you can bruteforce through every valid variable name  and eval each one to see if it results in a value  The following snippet tries the first 1000 bruteforce strings  which is enough to find the contrived variable names in scope   x000D   x000D  let alpha    abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz   let everyPossibleString   function        yield       for  let prefix of everyPossibleString    for  let char of alpha  yield    prefix   char       let allVarsInScope    iterations 1000    gt        let results         let count   0    for  let bruteforceString of everyPossibleString          if   bruteforceString  continue     Skip the first empty string     try   results bruteforceString    eval bruteforceString     catch err         if  count    gt  iterations  break        return results      let myScope         gt           let dd    ddd     let ee    eee     let ff    fff          gg  hh    gt                We can t call a separate function  since that function would be outside our        scope and wouldn t be able to see any variables - but we can define the        function in place  using  eval allVarsInScope toString       and then call        that defined-in-place function     console log eval allVarsInScope toString                   ggg    hhh             x000D   x000D   x000D   This script will eventually  after a very long time  find all scoped variable names  as well as abc nifty and swell  some example variables I created  Note it will only find variable names consisting of alpha characters   x000D   x000D  let preElem   document getElementsByClassName  display   0   let statusElem   document getElementsByClassName  status   0   let alpha    abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz   alpha    alpha toUpperCase    let everyPossibleString   function        yield       for  let prefix of everyPossibleString    for  let char of alpha  yield    prefix   char         async      gt         let abc    This is the ABC variable  -      let neato    This is the NEATO variable  -      let swell    This is the SWELL variable  -D        let results         let batch   25000    let waitMs   25    let count   0    let startStr   null     for  let bruteStr of everyPossibleString               try          if  bruteStr         continue        if  startStr     null  startStr   bruteStr         try   results bruteStr    eval bruteStr     catch err            if  count    gt   batch                     statusElem innerHTML    Did batch of   batch  from   startStr  - gt    bruteStr            preElem innerHTML   JSON stringify results  null  2                    count   0          startStr   null          await new Promise r   gt  setTimeout r  waitMs                          catch err                    It turns out some global variables are protected by stackoverflow s snippet          system  these include  top    self   and  this    If these values are touched          they result in a weird iframe error  captured in this  catch  statement  The          program can recover by replacing the most recent  result  value  this will be          the value which causes the error         let lastEntry   Object entries results  slice -1  0         results lastEntry 0       lt a protected value gt                                 console log  Done          Will literally never happen        x000D  html  body   position  fixed  left  0  top  0  right  0  bottom  0  margin  0  padding  0  overflow  hidden    display     position  fixed    box-sizing  border-box    left  0  top  0    bottom  30px  right  0    overflow-y  scroll    white-space  pre    font-family  monospace    padding  10px    box-shadow  inset 0 0 10px 1px rgba 0  0  0  0 3      status     position  fixed    box-sizing  border-box    left  0  bottom  0px  right  0  height  30px  line-height  30px    padding  0 10px    background-color  rgba 0  0  0  1     color  rgba 255  255  255  1     font-family  monospace    x000D   lt div class  display  gt  lt  div gt   lt div class  status  gt  lt  div gt  x000D   x000D   x000D   I am all too aware there is virtually no situation where this is practical

User · Answer

Although everyone answer  No  and I know that  No  is the right answer but if you really need to get local variables of a function there is a restricted way   Consider this function   var f   function         var x   0      console log x        You can convert your function to a string   var s   f         You will get source of function as a string   function      nvar x   0  nconsole log x   n     Now you can use a parser like esprima to parse function code and find local variable declarations   var s    function      nvar x   0  nconsole log x   n    s   s slice 12      to remove  function      var esprima   require  esprima    var result   esprima parse s     and find objects with   obj type     VariableDeclaration    in the result  I have removed console log x  below           type    Program        body                            type    VariableDeclaration                declarations                                            type    VariableDeclarator                        id                              type    Identifier                            name    x                                              init                              type    Literal                            value   0                           raw    0                                                                      kind    var                      I have tested this in Chrome  Firefox and Node   But the problem with this method is that you just have the variables defined in the function itself  For example for this one   var g   function         var y   0      var f   function             var x   0          console log x              you just have access to the x and not y  But still you can use chains of caller  arguments callee caller caller caller  in a loop to find local variables of caller functions  If you have all local variable names so you have scope variables  With the variable names you have access to values with a simple eval

User · Answer

The Simplest Way to Get Access to Vars in a Particular Scope   Open Developer Tools   Resources  in Chrome  Open file with a function that has access to that scope  tip cmd ctrl p to find file  Set breakpoint inside that function and run your code When it stops at your breakpoint  you can access the scope var through console  or scope var window     Note  You want to do this against un-minified js   The Simplest Way to Show All Non-Private Vars   Open Console  in Chrome  Type  this window Hit Enter   Now you will see an object tree you can expand with all declared objects

User · Answer

As everyone noticed  you can t  But you can create a obj and assign every var you declare to that obj  That way you can easily check out your vars   var v         put everything here  var f   function a  b    do something    v f   f    make s easy to debug var a    1 2 3   v a   a  var x    x   v x   x     so on     console log v     it s all there

User · Answer

In ECMAScript 6 it s more or less possible by wrapping the code inside a with statement with a proxy object  Note it requires non-strict mode and it s bad practice    x000D   x000D  function storeVars target    x000D    return new Proxy target    x000D      has target  prop    return true     x000D      get target  prop    return  prop in target   target   window  prop     x000D        x000D    x000D  var vars          Outer variable  not stored  x000D  with storeVars vars     x000D    var a   1       Stored in vars x000D    var b   2       Stored in vars x000D     function     x000D      var c   3     Inner variable  not stored  x000D          x000D    x000D  console log vars   x000D   x000D   x000D    The proxy claims to own all identifiers referenced inside with  so variable assignments are stored in the target  For lookups  the proxy retrieves the value from the proxy target or the global object  not the parent scope   let and const variables are not included   Inspired by this answer by Bergi

[javascript] Getting All Variables In Scope

Examples related to javascript