List of JavaScript globals used by CubeJS

[asingh04]

I am trying to use ESLint for static analysis of the CubeJS data model files in the .js format. For that it would be better to declare the set of globals like cube, view, securityContext, etc used in the .js files. I am trying to add support for CubeJS in the globals repository so that anyone who wants to integrate eslint with their data models can easily use it.
What would be the easy way to list out the global variables used in the data model files by CubeJS?

[paveltiunov]

Great idea — here's the full set. I verified each identifier by probing typeof for it inside the data model sandbox on a running Cube instance (1.7.25), rather than just reading the source.

Cube runs .js data model files in a Node vm context (see Execution Environment (JavaScript)). There are two distinct groups of globals.

1. File-level globals

These are the vm context object built in DataSchemaCompiler:

cube, view, context, view_group, asyncModule, addExport, setExport, require, COMPILE_CONTEXT

addExport / setExport are what ES export statements are transpiled into, and require is Cube's own resolver (other model files, plus packages like Funnels) — not Node's require.

2. Identifiers injected into transpiled member expressions

Cube's transpiler rewrites reserved properties (sql, measures, dimensions, segments, drill_members, …) into functions whose arguments are resolved symbols, so these appear as free identifiers in source:

CUBE, TABLE, FILTER_PARAMS, FILTER_GROUP, SQL_UTILS, SECURITY_CONTEXT, securityContext, security_context

SECURITY_CONTEXT is the deprecated uppercase form; securityContext / security_context are the lowercase forms accepted in access policies. The authoritative list is CONTEXT_SYMBOLS in packages/cubejs-schema-compiler/src/compiler/CubeSymbols.ts. Docs: Context variables.

Plus three Cube Cloud shorthands valid inside access_policy, which the transpiler expands to securityContext.cubeCloud.*:

userAttributes, user_attributes, groups

Confirmed not available

process, setTimeout, setInterval, Buffer, module, exports, __dirname, __filename — all undefined in the sandbox. Standard ES intrinsics (JSON, Math, Promise, globalThis, …) are present as usual.

Please don't include console

It's typeof "object" in a vm context, so a naive probe suggests it exists — but it's a detached console and console.log from a data model file produces no output at all (also noted in the docs). Leaving it out means no-undef flags it, which is a genuine true positive and useful to Cube users.

One caveat before you ship this

Cube names and member names are also resolvable bare identifiers. In a view, join_path: orders refers to the orders cube; inside a cube, ${count} refers to a sibling measure. These are model-dependent, so no static globals list can cover them and no-undef will still flag them.

I validated the list end to end with eslint 9 + no-undef over a model exercising every global above. The only two errors reported were console and a cube-name reference — both expected, per the two notes above. For reference, the config:

export default [
  {
    files: ['model/**/*.js'],
    languageOptions: {
      ecmaVersion: 2022,
      sourceType: 'module',
      globals: {
        cube: 'readonly', view: 'readonly', context: 'readonly',
        view_group: 'readonly', asyncModule: 'readonly',
        addExport: 'readonly', setExport: 'readonly', require: 'readonly',
        COMPILE_CONTEXT: 'readonly',
        CUBE: 'readonly', TABLE: 'readonly',
        FILTER_PARAMS: 'readonly', FILTER_GROUP: 'readonly',
        SQL_UTILS: 'readonly', SECURITY_CONTEXT: 'readonly',
        securityContext: 'readonly', security_context: 'readonly',
        userAttributes: 'readonly', user_attributes: 'readonly',
        groups: 'readonly',
      },
    },
    rules: { 'no-undef': 'error' },
  },
];

---

Generated by Claude Code