Tips & Tricks

Code Quality Analysis in WebStorm

WebStorm comes with many powerful tools to assure the high quality of your code base.

Dozens of built-in inspections are enabled by default. These static code analysis tools help you find probable bugs, detect performance issues and improve the overall code structure right as you write the code. You can also use the integrated code quality tools: JSHint or JSLint.

Inspections are available for all languages supported by WebStorm, including JavaScript, Node.js, HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, TypeScript, CoffeeScript and Dart.

Built-in inspections help you detect errors and potential problems, from obvious ones like a missing semicolon to more complex issues like unresolved methods in JavaScript and mismatching types when type info is available.

On-the-fly code analysis

Here are several examples of inspections in JavaScript:

missingsemicolon

suspiciousname

And in Less:

unresolvedvar

The description of the error shows up when you hover the mouse over the highlighted code.

Quick-fixes

Most inspections provide quick-fixes to deal with the issue right away:

jsunresolvedrvar

Position the caret on the highlighted code and press Alt-Enter to see the list of available quick-fixes or intentions. Choose the action you need with the arrow keys and press Enter:

quickfix

You can enable and disable intention suggestions in Preferences | Intentions.

Suppressing inspection

If you don’t want an inspection to be performed for a specific statement or method, you can suppress it from the list of intention actions (Alt+Enter) by pressing the right arrow. Alternatively, you can disable this inspection for the whole project:

suppressinspection

Navigation to errors in files

All the warnings and errors in the current file are color-marked on the scroll bar.
The Lens mode allows you to preview the highlighted line of code and inspection description, without actually navigating to that line:

lensmode

Keyboard shortcuts are also available for navigation to the next highlighted error in the current file (F2) or the previous one (Shift+F2).

Managing inspections

Inspection profile

The full list of built-in inspections is available in Preferences | Inspections:

preferencesinspections

Here you can set up your Global or Project specific inspection profile.
If you select Share profile, then the list of enabled inspections will be saved in the project’s .idea folder that you can put into your VCS and share with your team.

Using JSHint and JSLint

You can also use JSHint and JSLint as your code quality tools.
To enable JSHint or JSLint, go to Preferences | JavaScript | Code quality tools, select Enable, and then configure the tool-specific inspections:

jshint

For JSHint, you can also use your  configuration files: your project’s .jshintrc file, package.json with JSHint options, or a config file located elsewhere:

jshintuseconfig

Configuration of highlighting levels

As you may have noticed, some inspections highlight the code in yellow, while others just underline it. This depends on the level of Severity selected for each inspection.

You can adjust these levels in Preferences | Inspections per individual inspection:

inspectionseverity

Code analysis

You can perform code analysis for the whole project, selected directory, uncommitted files or a custom scope with the Inspect code command in the main Code menu.

inspect_code

From the code analysis report, you can easily navigate to the line with the error or warning:

codeanalysisreport

Give these tools a try if you haven’t already, to help yourself write and maintain high-quality code.

Develop with pleasure!
JetBrains WebStorm Team

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