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ScriptEngine Implementation

GraalVM provides a JSR-223 compliant javax.script.ScriptEngine implementation for running JavaScript. Note that this feature is provided for legacy reasons in order to allow easier migration for implementations currently based on a ScriptEngine. We strongly encourage users to use the org.graalvm.polyglot.Context interface in order to control many of the settings directly and benefit from finer-grained security settings in GraalVM.

Setting Options via Bindings #

The ScriptEngine interface does not provide a default way to set options. As a workaround, GraalJSScriptEngine supports setting some Context options through Bindings. These options are:

• polyglot.js.allowHostAccess <boolean>
• polyglot.js.allowNativeAccess <boolean>
• polyglot.js.allowCreateThread <boolean>
• polyglot.js.allowIO <boolean>
• polyglot.js.allowHostClassLookup <boolean or Predicate<String>>
• polyglot.js.allowHostClassLoading <boolean>
• polyglot.js.allowAllAccess <boolean>
• polyglot.js.nashorn-compat <boolean>
• polyglot.js.ecmascript-version <String>

These options control the sandboxing rules applied to evaluated JavaScript code and are set to false by default, unless the application was started in the Nashorn compatibility mode (--js.nashorn-compat=true).

Note that using ScriptEngine implies allowing experimental options. This is an exhaustive list of allowed options to be passed via Bindings; in case you need to pass additional options to GraalVM JavaScript, you need to manually create a Context as shown below.

To set an option via Bindings, use Bindings.put(<option name>, true) before the engine’s script context is initialized. Note that even a call to Bindings#get(String) may lead to context initialization. The following code shows how to enable polyglot.js.allowHostAccess via Bindings:

ScriptEngine engine = new ScriptEngineManager().getEngineByName("JavaScript");
Bindings bindings = engine.getBindings(ScriptContext.ENGINE_SCOPE);
bindings.put("polyglot.js.allowHostAccess", true);
bindings.put("polyglot.js.allowHostClassLookup", (Predicate<String>) s -> true);
bindings.put("javaObj", new Object());
engine.eval("(javaObj instanceof Java.type('java.lang.Object'));"); // it will not work without allowHostAccess and allowHostClassLookup

This example will not work if the user calls, e.g., engine.eval("var x = 1;"), before calling bindings.put("polyglot.js.allowHostAccess", true);, since any call to eval forces context initialization.

Setting Options via System Properties #

Options to the JavaScript engine can be set via system properties before starting the JVM by prepending polyglot.:

java -Dpolyglot.js.ecmascript-version=2022 MyApplication

Or, options to the JavaScript engine can be set programmatically from within Java before creating ScriptEngine. This, however, only works for the options passed to the JavaScript engine (like js.ecmascript), not for the six options mentioned above that can be set via the Bindings. Another caveat is that those system properties are shared by all concurrently executed ScriptEngines.

Manually Creating Context for More Flexibility #

Context options can also be passed to GraalJSScriptEngine directly, via an instance of Context.Builder:

ScriptEngine engine = GraalJSScriptEngine.create(null,
        Context.newBuilder("js")
        .allowHostAccess(HostAccess.ALL)
        .allowHostClassLookup(s -> true)
        .option("js.ecmascript-version", "2022"));
engine.put("javaObj", new Object());
engine.eval("(javaObj instanceof Java.type('java.lang.Object'));");

This allows setting all options available in GraalVM JavaScript. It does come at the cost of a hard dependency on GraalVM JavaScript, e.g., the GraalJSScriptEngine and Context classes.

Supported File Extensions #

The GraalVM JavaScript implementation of javax.script.ScriptEngine supports the js file extension for JavaScript source files, as well as the mjs extension for ES modules.