git-ignore-parser

A Node.js module to parse raw gitignore data

WARNING: this tool is a work-in-progress and might be unstable or unsuitable for serious use.

This modules parses a raw gitignore content, as specified in the official Git documentation, and returns an array of ignored paths that Git will look against.

Installation

npm install git-ignore-parser

Usage

Given this .gitignore file:

# Logs
logs/
*.log
npm-debug.log*
 
# Dependency directories
/node_modules/
jspm_packages

It would return the following:

const fs = require('fs');
const gitIgnoreParser = require('git-ignore-parser');
 
fs.readFile('.gitignore', 'utf-8', (error, data) {
  if (!error) {
    const ignoredPaths = gitIgnoreParser(data);
    console.log(ignoredPaths);
      // >> ['logs', '*.log', 'npm-debug.log*', 'node_modules', 'jspm_packages']
  }
});

Parsing rules

The parser will apply the following rules, as specified in the official Git documentation:

• Empty lines are ignored
• Lines starting with a # are treated as comments and are ignored
• Trailing spaces are ignored
• Trailing slashes are ignored
• Duplicates are ignored
• Globs and negative patterns are treated as is

License

The MIT License © Clément Paris