SpiderMonkey (JavaScript engine)

Infobox Software
name = SpiderMonkey


caption =
developer = Mozilla Foundation / Mozilla Corporation
latest_release_version =
latest_release_date =
operating_system = Cross-platform
genre = JavaScript engine
programming language = C
license = MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license
website = http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/

SpiderMonkey is the code name for the first ever JavaScript engine, written by Brendan Eich at Netscape Communications, later released as open source and now maintained by the Mozilla Foundation.

Internals

SpiderMonkey is written in C and contains a compiler, interpreter, decompiler, garbage collector, and standard classes. It does not itself provide host environments such as Document Object Model (DOM).

SpiderMonkey and its sister engine Rhino have implemented support for the ECMAScript for XML (E4X) standard.

Usage

It is intended to be embedded in other applications that provide host environments for JavaScript. The most popular applications are Mozilla Firefox and the Mozilla Application Suite/SeaMonkey, along with Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. SpiderMonkey is also the JavaScript engine for Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as "Konfabulator") and UOX3, an "Ultima Online" server emulator. A rather popular and creative utilization of the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine is the open source Sphere suite of applications primarily intended to aid in the design of role-playing games. Parts of SpiderMonkey are used in the Wine project's Jscript (re-)implementation. [ [http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-cvs/2008-September/047548.html wine-cvs mailing list] , September 16 2008: “jscript: Added regular expression compiler based on Mozilla regexp implementation”]

TraceMonkey

Mozilla has added optimization using [http://www.ics.uci.edu/~franz/Site/pubs-pdf/ICS-TR-07-12.pdf "Trace Trees"] to SpiderMonkey. Due to be released in late 2008 or early 2009, Firefox 3.1 is slated to include this new optimization technique which offers "performance improvements ranging between 20 and 40 times faster in some cases" [http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080822-firefox-to-get-massive-javascript-performance-boost.html]

See also

* Rhino
* List of JavaScript engines
* JavaScript OSA, a SpiderMonkey inter-process communication language for the Macintosh computer

References

External links

* [http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/ SpiderMonkey (JavaScript-C) Engine]
* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/SpiderMonkey Documentation for SpiderMonkey]
* [http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=10853&group_id=50913 Franky Braem Tutorial on using JS from C++]
* [http://www.wxjavascript.net wxJavaScript, porting wxWidgets using SpiderMonkey]
* [http://SpiderApe.sourceforge.net SpiderApe] - a C++ library built on top of SpiderMonkey, intended to simplify the process of embedding and extending SpiderMonkey
* [http://soubok.googlepages.com/javascript Some projects that use Spidermonkey engine] - JavaScript Native Interface, JavaScript Host
* [http://code.google.com/p/jslibs/ jslibs project] - zlib, SQLite, NSPR, ode, libpng, libjpeg, libffi, (...) libraries for SpiderMonkey.
* [http://malzilla.sourceforge.net/ Malzilla] - Tool for hunting malware by deobfuscating JavaScripts on web pages, using SpiderMonkey
* [http://www.trixul.com/ TriXUL] - [http://trixul.cvs.sourceforge.net/trixul/trixul/layout/jsengine (TriXUL CVS)] - Trixul XML-based GUI toolkit embeds SpiderMonkey, using JavaScript to implement logic behind its GUI, supporting calls from JavaScript to C++ objects.