Distinguishing Rules

JSAnalyzer leverages rules for distinguishing interaction-related code fragments in the source code (distinguishing rules). Find raw XML files containing distinguishing rules at YOUR_CLONE_DIR/res/rules/*. Here, we define the distinguishing rules to help you give JSAnalyzer your original rules.

Definition of distinguishing rules

We have already define distinguishing rules for build-in elements. First, we would like to explain how we describe the rules in our XML formats.

Class	HTML attribute	JavaScript function	CSS property
Trigger	User event handler	-	-
Function	-	Event handling functions	-
Control	Control & Hidden	DOM manipulation functions	Display & Visibility

Trigger

A trigger rule should have its interaction type (User, Server, or Self) and an event type (e.g., onchange).

Attribute	Definition	Instances
interact	Interaction type	User, Server, or Self
event	Event type	onchange, onclick, etc

A XML description for the onchange event is below.

<Trigger interact="User" event="onchange" />

Function

TBA

Control

TBA

Manipulate

TBA

Attribute	Definition	Instances
func	Function name	getElementById, createElement, appendChild, setAttribute, etc
semantic	Semantic of manipulate function	get, create, insert, or set
by	A method to determine manipulate target	id and tagname (TBD)
value	Manipulate value	arg_1, etc
target	Manipulate target	ret and propTarget (TBD)

A XML description for the document.getElementById("foo") is below.

<Manipulate func="getElementById" semantic="get" by="id" value="arg_1" target="ret" />

Library

To precisely analyze Ajax apps behavior, define rules for each too complex JavaScript libraries. You can describe Trigger, Potential, Control, and Manipulate rules for the JS libraries as well as build-in ones above. And give a XML file path containing the descriptions to JSAnalyzer.

Attribute	Definition	Instances
method	Utility methods to match ruled JavaScript libraries	startsWith, contains, or regex
name	Keyword to match depending on the above method	prototype.js, jquery, md[0-9].js, etc
path	A file path containing this libraries' rules	path/to/rules4prototypejs.xml, etc
skip	Skip to parse this library or not	true or false (currently ignored, i.e., always true)

Your original rules should be registered in your project. For example, you can find a registration of the jQuery rule at res/rules/ruledJS.xml.

<Library method="startsWith" name="jquery"  path="res/libRules/jquery.xml" skip="true" />

And res/libRules/jquery.xml has the following distinguishing rules.

...<Potential interact="User" func="submit" target="propTarget" event="submit" callback="arg_1"/>...
...<Manipulate func="$" semantic="get" by="css_query" value="arg_1" target="ret" />...