README

unitfile-parser

This is a small utility library to parse systemd unitfiles to and from JavaScript data structures. Three formats are available:

string, which is the representation inside of a unit file,
ast, which is a JS object representation of the parser AST, including comments,
data, which is a normalized representation of the data, useful to do general computing. It has the following format:

{
  title: String,
  settings: {
    [key:String]: String|String[],
  }
}[]

Conversions are available in all directions between these formats, with the only external dependency being chevrotain.

This package does not know or check whether the logic of a unit file is correct (e.g. are you using the correct names for options, etc.), it only knows what the syntax is supposed to be.

Usage

For most usecases, you'll only need two functions: stringToData and dataToString:

import { readFile, writeFile } from 'fs/promises';
import { stringToData, dataToString } from 'unitfile-parser';

(async () => {
  const unitFilePath = '~/.config/systemd/user/xsettingsd.service';

  // Read the current file from disk
  const fileContents = await readFile(unitFilePath);

  // Transform it to a useful data structure
  const unit = stringToData(fileContents);

  // Change it around
  const transformedUnit = doSomeTransformation(unit);

  // Transform the changed unit back to a string
  const newFileContents = dataToString(transformedUnit);

  // Write the changed file back to disk
  await writeFile(unitFilePath, newFileContents);
})();

API

This package is written for esm5 and above, providing only JS modules (.mjs files) to work with.

stringToAst(input: String): Object

Convert a unit file string to a JS AST.

import { readFile } from 'fs/promises';
import { stringToAst } from 'unitfile-parser';

readFile('~/.config/systemd/user/xsettingsd.service')
  .then(fileContents => {
    const ast = stringToAst(fileContents);
    console.log(ast);
  });

stringToData(input: String): Array

Convert a unit file string to a normalized representation. This is equivalent to the following:

const data = astToData(stringToAst(string));

astToData(ast: Object): Array

Convert the parser ast to a normalized representation.

astToString(ast: Object): String

Convert an ast to a valid unit file string.

import { writeFile } from 'fs/promises';
import { astToString } from 'unitfile-parser';

const ast = // some ast here

const unitFile = astToString(ast);

writeFile('~/.config/systemd/user/xsettingsd.service', unitFile);

dataToAst(data: Array): Object

Convert the normalized JS representation to the parser ast.

dataToString(data: Array): String

Convert the normalized JS representation to a valid unit file string. This is equivalent to the following:

const string = astToString(dataToAst(data));

Lexer

Constructor for a lexer that extends the chevrotain Lexer.

Parser

Constructor for a parser that extends the chevrotain CSTParser.

visitorCreator(parser: Parser): ICSTVisitor

Function that takes a parser and returns a visitor for that parser that would normalize the ast to the abovementioned data format.

Motivation

There already is a systemd-unitfile package on npm, but it is unmaintained and has some bad behaviour, like not recognizing multiline values.

Usage no npm install needed!