ParseNode

A text-preserving accessibility injector for Xcode Storyboards and XIB files.

Features

• 🎯 Automatically adds accessibility identifiers to UI elements in Storyboard/XIB files
• 🔒 Preserves exact formatting and indentation
• ⚡ Fast SAX-based parsing with minimal memory footprint
• 🛠️ Works as both CLI tool and programmatic API
• ✨ Handles self-closing tags correctly
• 📝 Generates consistent, predictable identifiers

Installation

Global Installation (CLI)

npm install -g parsenode

Project Installation

npm install parsenode --save-dev

Usage

CLI

Process a single file:

parsenode --file path/to/YourView.storyboard --apply

Process multiple files with glob patterns:

parsenode --glob "Views/**/*.storyboard" --apply

Dry run (preview changes without applying):

parsenode --file path/to/YourView.storyboard

Programmatic API

import { parseStoryboardFile } from 'parsenode';
import { computePatchOpsForFile } from 'parsenode';
import { applyPatchOpsToFile } from 'parsenode';
import { readFileSync } from 'fs';

// Parse storyboard and get UI elements
const elements = parseStoryboardFile('./path/to/View.storyboard');

// Compute what changes to make
const rawText = readFileSync('./path/to/View.storyboard', 'utf8');
const ops = computePatchOpsForFile(rawText, elements);

// Apply changes
await applyPatchOpsToFile(
  './path/to/View.storyboard',
  rawText,
  ops,
  { dryRun: false, backup: true }
);

How It Works

ParseNode scans your Storyboard/XIB files for UI elements (buttons, labels, text fields, etc.) that don't have accessibility identifiers. It then generates and injects <accessibility> tags with identifiers based on the element type and existing ID attributes.

Example

Before:

<button opaque="NO" contentMode="scaleToFill" id="abc-123">
    <rect key="frame" x="0" y="0" width="100" height="44"/>
</button>

After:

<button opaque="NO" contentMode="scaleToFill" id="abc-123">
    <rect key="frame" x="0" y="0" width="100" height="44"/>
    <accessibility key="accessibilityConfiguration" identifier="btn_abc-123" label="btn_abc-123"/>
</button>

Supported UI Elements

• button
• label
• textField
• textView
• imageView
• switch
• slider
• stepper
• segmentedControl
• tableViewCell
• collectionViewCell
• view
• barButtonItem
• navigationItem
• navigationBar
• stackView
• tableView
• collectionView

Options

CLI Options

• --file <path> - Process a single file
• --glob <pattern> - Process files matching glob pattern
• --apply - Apply changes (omit for dry run)

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.