Question

We can compile coffescript file to js-file with command:

coffee –join path/to/result.js –compile path/to/coffeescript_dir/

But what if I want to compile a piece of coffeescript code (as text) and get piece of js code (as a text too), and they are not files.
For example:

• cs text: "func = () -> 55"

• js text result: "var func; func = function(){return 55;}"

It must be done from console, or even better from python interactive console 🙂

Answer 1

You can use --eval to take a string parameter as coffee input, --bare to avoid the JS output being wrapped in a closure, and --print to print the output on stdout instead of a file:

$ coffee --print --bare -eval 'func = -> 55' 
var func;

func = function() {
  return 55;
};

To call it from Python, you can use the subprocess module:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
def compile_cs(cs_code):
    args = ['coffee', '--print', '--bare', '--eval', cs_code]
    return Popen(args, stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0]