How to do JSLint in Vim

I spend my days in vim, currently writing a lot of JavaScript. I've been trying to find a way to integrate JSLint or something similar into vim to improve my coding. Has anyone managed to do something like this?

I tried this: Javascript Syntax Checking From Vim, unfortunately the output is very crude.

The best-practice way IMO is:

1. Install Syntastic Vim plugin - Best syntax-checker around for plenty of languages, plus it integrates with Vim's location-list (==quickfix) window.

• I recommend cloning from the GitHub repo and installing using a plugin manager like Vundle or Pathogen, since it's more frequently updated.

2. Choose one of the two options below:

JSLint

1. Install jsl (JSLint executable) using your favorite package manager (Ubuntu's apt-get, Mac's home brew, etc.).

Community-driven jshint.com (better than JSLint)

1. Install node.js using your favorite package manager.
2. Install Node Package Manager: 'curl https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh' EDIT: npm IS PART OF node.js NOW
   • See http://npmjs.org for more info.
3. Install jshint globally: 'npm install jshint -g'
4. Put your jshint config file in your $HOME dir: '~/.jshintrc'
   • Here's JSHint-Node's example configuration file, they pulled from mine and added more stuff.
   • Here's my original copy, which you can also start from.
5. Overwrite Syntastic's syntax_checkers/javascript.vim file with this one - EDIT: NO LONGER NECESSARY WITH NEWEST SYNTASTIC VERSION.
   • Script copied from FactorayLab's really helpful Vim GitHub page, which I recommend every Vim user to check out.

Enjoy! :)

You can follow the intructions from JSLint web-service + VIM integration or do what I did:

Download http://jslint.webvm.net/mylintrun.js and http://www.jslint.com/fulljslint.js and put them in a directory of your choice.

Then add the following line to the beginning of mylintrun.js:

var filename= arguments[0];

and change last line of code in mylintrun.js ("print( ...)") to:

 print ( filename + ":" + (obj["line"] + 1) + ":" + (obj["character"] + 1) + ":" + obj["reason"] );

This makes in mylintrun.js output a error list that can be used with the VIM quickfix window (:copen).

Now set the following in VIM:

set makeprg=cat\ %\ \\\|\ /my/path/to/js\ /my/path/to/mylintrun.js\ %
set errorformat=%f:%l:%c:%m

where you have to change /my/path/to/js to the path to SpiderMonkey and /my/path/to/mylintrun.js to the path where you put the JS files.

Now, you can use :make in VIM and use the quickfix window (:he quickfix-window) to jump from error to error.

Another option is jslint.vim from Jesse Hallet. It's available on GitHub and works with or without Vim's QuickFix window. It's a nice plugin!

I've been very happy using node-lint

sudo npm -g install jslint

Then whack this somewhere in your .vim

set makeprg=jslint\ %
set errorformat=%-P%f,
        \%E%>\ #%n\ %m,%Z%.%#Line\ %l\\,\ Pos\ %c,
        \%-G%f\ is\ OK.,%-Q

Now a :make will run jslint. Errors appear in the quickfix window.

Here are the Mac OS instructions updated for Nov. 2012. Assumes you have https://brew.sh/">Homebrew</a> installed in order to get Node.js, and that you've already installed Syntastic for Vim (I use https://github.com/carlhuda/janus which provides this automatically):

$ brew install node.js
$ npm install -g jshint

Then add '/usr/local/share/npm/bin' to your PATH (probably in ~/.bashrc). For example, add the line: export PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/share/npm/bin"

restart your Terminal and check that

$ jshint

is executable from the command line. Syntastic will discover jsHint automatically. Restart MacVim and enjoy!

Much better is to pipe the results through Lynx to deal with JSLint's unfortunate choice of HTML for output format. I have a blog post on how to do it here:

http://www.fleegix.org/articles/2008-09-06-jslint-in-vim-through-lynx