How to get function parameter names/values dynamic

Question

Is there a way to get the function parameter names of a function dynamically?

Let’s say my function looks like this:

function doSomething(param1, param2, .... paramN){
   // fill an array with the parameter name and value
   // some other code 
}

Now, how would I get a list of the parameter names and their values into an array from inside the function?

Answer 1

The proper way to do this is to use a JS parser. Here is an example using acorn.

const acorn = require('acorn');    

function f(a, b, c) {
   // ...
}

const argNames = acorn.parse(f).body[0].params.map(x => x.name);
console.log(argNames);  // Output: [ 'a', 'b', 'c' ]

The code here finds the names of the three (formal) parameters of the function f. It does so by feeding f into acorn.parse().

Answer 2

Below is the code taken from AngularJS which uses the technique for its dependency injection mechanism.

And here is an explanation of it taken from http://docs.angularjs.org/tutorial/step_05

Angular's dependency injector provides services to your controller when the controller is being constructed. The dependency injector also takes care of creating any transitive dependencies the service may have (services often depend upon other services).

Note that the names of arguments are significant, because the injector uses these to look up the dependencies.

/**
 * @ngdoc overview
 * @name AUTO
 * @description
 *
 * Implicit module which gets automatically added to each {@link AUTO.$injector $injector}.
 */

var FN_ARGS = /^function\s*[^\(]*\(\s*([^\)]*)\)/m;
var FN_ARG_SPLIT = /,/;
var FN_ARG = /^\s*(_?)(.+?)\1\s*$/;
var STRIP_COMMENTS = /((\/\/.*$)|(\/\*[\s\S]*?\*\/))/mg;
function annotate(fn) {
  var $inject,
      fnText,
      argDecl,
      last;

  if (typeof fn == 'function') {
    if (!($inject = fn.$inject)) {
      $inject = [];
      fnText = fn.toString().replace(STRIP_COMMENTS, '');
      argDecl = fnText.match(FN_ARGS);
      forEach(argDecl[1].split(FN_ARG_SPLIT), function(arg){
        arg.replace(FN_ARG, function(all, underscore, name){
          $inject.push(name);
        });
      });
      fn.$inject = $inject;
    }
  } else if (isArray(fn)) {
    last = fn.length - 1;
    assertArgFn(fn[last], 'fn')
    $inject = fn.slice(0, last);
  } else {
    assertArgFn(fn, 'fn', true);
  }
  return $inject;
}

Answer 3

Whatever the solution, it must not break on wierd functions, whose toString() looks just as wierd:

function  (  A,  b
,c      ,d
){}

Also, why use complex regular expressions? This can be done like:

function getArguments(f) {
    return f.toString().split(')',1)[0].replace(/\s/g,'').substr(9).split(',');
}

This works everywhere with every function, and the only regex is whitespace removal that doesn't even process the whole string due to the .split trick.

Answer 4

Ok so an old question with plenty of adequate answers. here is my offering that does not use regex, except for the menial task of stripping whitespace . (I should note that the "strips_comments" function actually spaces them out, rather than physically remove them. that's because i use it elsewhere and for various reasons need the locations of the original non comment tokens to stay intact)

It's a fairly lengthy block of code as this pasting includes a mini test framework.

    function do_tests(func) {

    if (typeof func !== 'function') return true;
    switch (typeof func.tests) {
        case 'undefined' : return true;
        case 'object'    : 
            for (var k in func.tests) {

                var test = func.tests[k];
                if (typeof test==='function') {
                    var result = test(func);
                    if (result===false) {
                        console.log(test.name,'for',func.name,'failed');
                        return false;
                    }
                }

            }
            return true;
        case 'function'  : 
            return func.tests(func);
    }
    return true;
} 
function strip_comments(src) {

    var spaces=(s)=>{
        switch (s) {
            case 0 : return '';
            case 1 : return ' ';
            case 2 : return '  ';
        default : 
            return Array(s+1).join(' ');
        }
    };

    var c1 = src.indexOf ('/*'),
        c2 = src.indexOf ('//'),
        eol;

    var out = "";

    var killc2 = () => {
                out += src.substr(0,c2);
                eol =  src.indexOf('\n',c2);
                if (eol>=0) {
                    src = spaces(eol-c2)+'\n'+src.substr(eol+1);
                } else {
                    src = spaces(src.length-c2);
                    return true;
                }

             return false;
         };

    while ((c1>=0) || (c2>=0)) {
         if (c1>=0) {
             // c1 is a hit
             if ( (c1<c2) || (c2<0) )  {
                 // and it beats c2
                 out += src.substr(0,c1);
                 eol = src.indexOf('*/',c1+2);
                 if (eol>=0) {
                      src = spaces((eol-c1)+2)+src.substr(eol+2);
                 } else {
                      src = spaces(src.length-c1);
                      break;
                 }
             } else {

                 if (c2 >=0) {
                     // c2 is a hit and it beats c1
                     if (killc2()) break;
                 }
             }
         } else {
             if (c2>=0) {
                // c2 is a hit, c1 is a miss.
                if (killc2()) break;  
             } else {
                 // both c1 & c2 are a miss
                 break;
             }
         }

         c1 = src.indexOf ('/*');
         c2 = src.indexOf ('//');   
        }

    return out + src;
}

function function_args(fn) {
    var src = strip_comments(fn.toString());
    var names=src.split(')')[0].replace(/\s/g,'').split('(')[1].split(',');
    return names;
}

function_args.tests = [

     function test1 () {

            function/*al programmers will sometimes*/strip_comments_tester/* because some comments are annoying*/(
            /*see this---(((*/ src//)) it's an annoying comment does not help anyone understand if the 
            ,code,//really does
            /**/sucks ,much /*?*/)/*who would put "comment\" about a function like (this) { comment } here?*/{

            }


        var data = function_args(strip_comments_tester);

        return ( (data.length==4) &&
                 (data[0]=='src') &&
                 (data[1]=='code') &&
                 (data[2]=='sucks') &&
                 (data[3]=='much')  );

    }

];
do_tests(function_args);

Answer 5

The answer to this requires 3 steps:

1. To get the values of the actual parameters passed to the function (let's call it argValues). This is straight forward as it will be available as arguments inside the function.
2. To get the parameter names from the function signature (let's call it argNames). This not as easy and requires parsing the function. Instead of doing the complex regex yourself and worrying about edge cases (default parameters, comments, ...), you can use a library like babylon that will parse the function into an abstract syntax tree from which you can obtain the names of parameters.
3. The last step is to join the 2 arrays together into 1 array that has the name and value of all the parameters.

The code will be like this

const babylon = require("babylon")
function doSomething(a, b, c) {
    // get the values of passed argumenst
    const argValues = arguments

    // get the names of the arguments by parsing the function
    const ast = babylon.parse(doSomething.toString())
    const argNames =  ast.program.body[0].params.map(node => node.name)

    // join the 2 arrays, by looping over the longest of 2 arrays
    const maxLen = Math.max(argNames.length, argValues.length)
    const args = []
    for (i = 0; i < maxLen; i++) { 
       args.push({name: argNames[i], value: argValues[i]})
    }
    console.log(args)

    // implement the actual function here
}

doSomething(1, 2, 3, 4)

and the logged object will be

[
  {
    "name": "a",
    "value": 1
  },
  {
    "name": "c",
    "value": 3
  },
  {
    "value": 4
  }
]

And here's a working example https://tonicdev.com/5763eb77a945f41300f62a79/5763eb77a945f41300f62a7a

Answer 6

(function(a,b,c){}).toString().replace(/.*\(|\).*/ig,"").split(',')

=> [ "a", "b", "c" ]