Feature request: generate type definitions for Web APIs from Web IDL files

[ackalker]

I know that Tern ships with a type definition file "browser.json", which mostly covers the DOM, it would be nice to have definitions for other major APIs like Web Animations, Web Audio, HTML5 Canvas, etc, for auto completion and type information.

I think it should not be too difficult to generate type definition files directly from Web IDL[1] as used in the API standard documents by major browsers[2][3]. The Mozilla project collects them all in a convenient place[4].

There are many Web IDL parsers out there, some of them written in JavaScript, such as this one[5]. I think it should not be too hard to transform the generated AST to Tern's type definition format.

Any ideas, suggestions?

--Alain

[1]: Web IDL - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_IDL
[2]: Web IDL in Blink - The Chromium Projects : http://www.chromium.org/blink/webidl
[3]: WebIDL bindings - Mozilla | MDN : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/WebIDL_bindings
[4]: mozilla-central mozilla/dom/webidl/ : http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/webidl/
[5]: darobin/webidl2.js : https://github.com/darobin/webidl2.js

[ackalker]

Web IDL types need to be converted to JavaScript types. Here's an example of a converter to TypeScript, which I think should be pretty straightforward to adapt to JavaScript: webidl.js/app.ts at typescript · extensibleweb/webidl.js : https://github.com/extensibleweb/webidl.js/blob/typescript/typescript/app.ts

[ackalker]

Here is an example of a code generator which generates JavaScript wrappers from Web IDL definitions (for use in a DOM implementation in JavaScript): dom.js/idl2domjs at master · andreasgal/dom.js : https://github.com/andreasgal/dom.js/blob/master/tools/idl2domjs

I think this can be adapted to generate type definitions for Tern instead.

[ackalker]

An example of a Web IDL to TypeScript typings converter: RicoP/idl2typings : https://github.com/RicoP/idl2typings
This should in theory enable converting Web IDL -> TypeScript -> Tern type definition, but sadly the converter barfs on anything I've fed it other than the included IDL file. Also, the repo contains only the PEG.js generated parser, not any grammar or support files, so fixing this is going to be difficult without help from the author.

[MetaMemoryT]

Web IDL support is a good candidate for a tern plugin, why not create a repository tern-web-idl and then start hacking something up at that location? And collect implementation ideas their also.

[hfmanson]

I forked and improved https://github.com/RicoP/idl2typings thanks to the new webidl2 parser, see https://github.com/hfmanson/idl2typings