API Documentation

Overview

The JSLint Errors API is a simple service that allows you to request explanations for JSLint, JSHint and ESLint error messages from your own applications. Potential uses include integrating error explanations into text editors, IDEs or related web UIs.

All API access is performed over HTTP and accessed from the api.linterrors.com domain. All data is sent and received as JSON. All responses are sent with an Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header. This means you can communicate with the API from client- side JavaScript if you would like to.

There are no restrictions to using this API. Please just be sensible and let me know if you're planning on making thousands of requests in short periods of time. Otherwise you might find yourself throttled or banned.

Explanations

This is the heart of the JSLint Errors API. It's a simple service that will attempt to return an explanation for the message you provide.

GET /explain

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
message	String	The text of a single error message given by JSLint, JSHint or ESLint. Aliased as m.
format	String	The format of the explanation in the response. Valid values are md for Markdown and html for the corresponding markup. Aliased as f.

Example response

Status: 200
Content-Type: application/json
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

{
  "title": "Unexpected dangling '_' in '_x'.",
  "explanation": "<markdown or html>",
  "link": "http://linterrors.com/js/unexpected-dangling-_-in-a",
  "codes": [
    {
      "linter": "jslint",
      "version": "<linter version>"
    }
  ],
  "author": {
    "name": "<display name>",
    "twitter": "<twitter username>",
    "gplus": "<google+ id>",
    "gravatar": "<gravatar id>",
    "bio": "<plain text>"
  }
}

The response is fairly self-explanatory. The codes property is an array with one element for each <pre><code>...</code></pre> block in the explanation. You can use this infomration if you want to generate interactive examples as demonstrated on individual article pages on the main site.

Author information is included and although it is not required it would be appreciated if you could display at least the name. It would also be appreciated if you could include the link to the site somewhere in your UI.

Linting

As well as providing explanations you can use the API to run a linter against some arbitrary code. This is useful is you don't want to bundle linters into your application or if you want to run code against an old or obscure version of a linter.

POST /lint or GET /lint

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
code	String	The code you want to validate. This can be of any length and in any format you like. It will work best if you do not modify it at all ( by removing new lines for example) before submitting it. Aliased as c.
linter	String	Optional. The linter to run against the code. Valid values are jslint, jshint and eslint/ Aliased as l. Defaults to jslint.
version	String	Optional. The version of the linter. Valid values can be found in the list of available versions or via the /linters API route. Aliased as v. Defaults to the latest available version of the selected linter.
options	Object	Optional. A map of options and their values to pass on to the selected linter. See the documentation of your chosen lint tool for the available options. Aliased as o.

Example response

Status: 200
Content-Type: application/json
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "message": "<plain text>",
      "code": "<plain text>",
      "line": 2
      "character": 0
    }
  ]
}

The response here is a normalised version of the response given by JSLint, JSHint and ESLint. The code property refers to the internal identifier of the error if applicable.

Linters

If you want to determine the linters and versions available at run time you can use this endpoint to retrieve a list of the versions we host of each linter.

GET /linters

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
linter	String	Optional. The name of the linter you're interested in. If specified the response will be an array of available versions. If not specified the response will be a map of available linters to their versions. Aliased as l.

Example response

Status: 200
Content-Type: application/json
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

{
  "jslint": [
    "2014-02-06",
    "2014-01-26"
  ],
  "jshint": [
    "2.4.4",
    "2.4.3"
  ],
  "eslint": [
    "0.4.4"
  ]
}