Build a Polyglot Native Executable (Java and JavaScript)

With the GraalVM Polyglot API you can embed and run code from a guest language in a Java-based host application. GraalVM makes it possible to compile a Java application ahead-of-time with embedded JavaScript and to create a polyglot native executable. See the Embedding Languages documentation for more information about how a Java host application can interact with a guest language like JavaScript.

This guide demonstrates how to build a polyglot native executable with Java as a host language and JavaScript as a guest language.

For the demo part, you will use a simple JSON Pretty Printer Java application that prints the output in JSON format.

Prerequisite

Make sure you have installed a GraalVM JDK. The easiest way to get started is with SDKMAN!. For other installation options, visit the Downloads section.

Create a Maven project and replace the default Application.java file with a file named PrettyPrintJSON.java. Copy and paste the following contents into the file:

 import java.io.*;
 import java.util.stream.*;
 import org.graalvm.polyglot.*;

 public class PrettyPrintJSON {
   public static void main(String[] args) throws java.io.IOException {
     BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
     String input = reader.lines()
     .collect(Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator()));
     try (Context context = Context.create("js")) {
       Value parse = context.eval("js", "JSON.parse");
       Value stringify = context.eval("js", "JSON.stringify");
       Value result = stringify.execute(parse.execute(input), null, 2);
       System.out.println(result.asString());
     }
   }
 }

Open your project configuration file (in this case, pom.xml) and add the following dependencies to enable interoperability with JavaScript.

To enable the polyglot runtime:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.graalvm.polyglot</groupId>
    <artifactId>polyglot</artifactId> 
    <version>${graalvm.version}</version>
</dependency>

To enable Javascript:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.graalvm.polyglot</groupId>
    <artifactId>js</artifactId> 
    <version>${graalvm.version}</version>
</dependency>

Compile the project using the GraalVM JDK:
```
 ./mvnw clean package
```
Build a native executable:
```
 native-image PrettyPrintJSON
```
It takes several minutes as it does not just build the executable, but also pulls in the JavaScript engine. The JavaScript context will be available in the generated image.

Note: Building a polyglot native executable requires more physical memory because the Truffle framework is included.

Run the resulting executable and perform some pretty-printing:

 ./prettyprintjson <<EOF
 {"GraalVM":{"description":"Language Abstraction Platform","supports":["combining languages","embedding languages","creating native images"],"languages": ["Java","JavaScript","Node.js", "Python", "Ruby","R","LLVM"]}}
 EOF

The expected output is:

 {
 "GraalVM": {
     "description": "Language Abstraction Platform",
     "supports": [
     "combining languages",
     "embedding languages",
     "creating native images"
     ],
     "languages": [
     "Java",
     "JavaScript",
     "Node.js",
     "Python",
     "Ruby",
     "R",
     "LLVM"
     ]
 }
 }

The native executable version runs faster than running the same application on the GraalVM JDK.

Note: JavaScript support by GraalVM Native Image is considered general availability. The remaining languages support is experimental.

Build a Polyglot Native Executable (Java and JavaScript)

Prerequisite

Related Documentation