Try js2-jump-to-definition first

[TatriX]

js2-mode has a js2-jump-to-definition functions which can jump to a local definition.
Currently I'm using a bit hacky approach:

(defun my-js-jump-to-definition ()
  "Jump to a definition."
  (interactive)
  (condition-case-unless-debug nil
      (js2-jump-to-definition)
    (error
     (xref-pop-marker-stack)
     (xref-find-definitions (xref-backend-identifier-at-point (xref-find-backend))))))

The logic is simple: try jump with js2-mode ast, if it fails for whatever reason fallback to xref.
It would be cool if xref-js2 could use something like this for local jumps, because current behavior isn't quite good in my opinion.

[NicolasPetton]

Indeed, that'd be a good improvement!

[TatriX]

Do you think this approach could be added to an xref-js2? If so I make a PR.

[NicolasPetton]

TatriX <notifications@github.com> writes:

Do you think this approach could be added to an `xref-js2`? If so I make a PR.

Yes, definitely, but only if the feature uses js2 for local definitions.

[TatriX]

The problem is with (js2-jump-to-definition). Currently it jumps to a location.
To use it from the xref I need to get a location. Probably I can workaround it with save-excursion but I'm not sure what is the best way to implement it.

[NicolasPetton]

Using save-excursion can be a workaround until a better solution is offered by js2.

[Fuco1]

There's also https://github.com/jojojames/smart-jump which is used to configure these kinds of fallbacks. I think it would be better solution to use something like that instead of baking it into the package: different users might have different preferences.

As a side note, what advantage does it provide to use js2-jump-to-definition instead of just xref directly?

[TatriX]

It uses js2-mode AST, so sometimes it can do a better job then grep.

[Fuco1]

I thought that this package also uses that to filter out noise. I personally use flow-minor-mode on many projects too so that's my "go to" choice for finding references. Which just shows that there is many possible workflows and many possible callbacks combinations.