api.md

API

The typical use for dependency-cruiser is on the command line. However, you might want to use it programmatically. For this, dependency-cruiser has an API. While the engine behind the API and the command line interface are stable the API is under construction.

Basic use

const depcruise = require("dependency-cruiser").cruise;

let dependencies = depcruise(["src"]).output;

With no other parameters than this, it will return an javascript object with a shape like this:

{
    output: {
        modules: ... the modules with their dependencies
        summary: {}
    },
    exitCode: 0
}

The object in the output attribute is in dependency-cruiser's json output format.

Parameters

Files and or folders to cruise

The first parameter is an array of strings, each of which is a file, folder and/ or glob pattern to start the cruise with.

Options

The second parameter of the depcruise function is an object influencing the way the dependencies are cruised and how they're returned. For instance to cruise the src folder, excluding all dependencies to node_modules from being followed, and having a GraphViz dot script returned, you'd do this:

const depcruise = require('dependency-cruiser');

const dependenciesInAGraphVizDotScript = depcruise(
    ["src"]
    {
        exclude       : "(node_modules)",
        moduleSystems : ["cjs"],
        outputType    : "dot"
    }
).output;

Apart from all the ones mentioned in the options section of the rules reference, you can use these options:

option	meaning
validate	if true, will attempt to validate with the rules in ruleSet - defaults to false.
ruleSet	An object containing the rules to validate against. The rules should adhere to the ruleset schema
outputType	One of the output types mentioned in the --output-format command line options

Return value

An object with two attributes:

attribute	content
output	the result of the cruise. The outputType you pass in the options determines how it will look. If you don't supply an outputType it will will contain a javascript object that adheres to dependency-cruiser's results schema.
exitCode	The exit code the command line (typically 0, but some reporters will return a non-zero value in here e.g. when errors were detected in the output)