JavaScript API misuse detection by using typescript

Abstract

Static analysis of JavaScript programs to detect errors in them is a challenging task. Especially when the program imports massive JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and MooTools, analyzing the whole program and the libraries is expensive and extremely declines the analysis efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to solve the problem by modularizing the analysis. We separate the analysis of JavaScript libraries by using types extracted from their corresponding specifications in TypeScript and the analysis of JavaScript applications by a static analysis framework. We use DefinitelyTyped, an open-source repository that provides TypeScript declaration files of over 300 popular JavaScript libraries, and we extend SAFE, an open-source analysis framework for JavaScript.