@cliqz/adblocker

Adblocker

A fast and memory efficient, pure-JavaScript content-blocking library made by Cliqz.

This library is the building block technology used to power Ghostery and Cliqz' Adblocking. Being a pure JavaScript library it is trivial to include in any new project and can also be used as a building block for tooling. For example this library can be used for:

• Building a content-blocking extension (see this example for a minimal content-blocking webextension)
• Building tooling around popular block-lists such as EasyList
  • validating filters
  • normalizing filters
  • detecting redundant filters
• Detecting dead domains
• etc.

The library provides abstractions to manipulate filters at a low-level.

Getting Started

This package can be installed directly from npm:

$ npm install @cliqz/adblocker

Or you can install it from sources directly:

$ npm ci
$ npm pack
$ npm run test

Multiple bundles are provided in the dist folder.

Usage

Network Filters

Here is how one can parse and match individual network filters:

const { NetworkFilter, Request } = require('@cliqz/adblocker');

// 1. Parsing
const filter = NetworkFilter.parse('||domain.com/ads.js$script');

// 2. Matching
filter.match(new Request({
  type: 'script',

  domain: 'domain.com',
  hostname: 'domain.com',
  url: 'https://domain.com/ads.js?param=42',

  sourceUrl: 'https://domain.com/',
  sourceHostname: 'domain.com',
  sourceDomain: 'domain.com',
}));

Matching requires you to provide an instance of Request which knows about the type of the request (e.g.: main_frame, script, etc.) as well as the URL, hostname and domain of the request and source URL. To make things a bit easier, the library exposes a makeRequest helper which can be used alongside a library like tldts (or another library providing parsing of hostnames and domains) to provide the parsing:

const tldts = require('tldts');
const { NetworkFilter, makeRequest } = require('@cliqz/adblocker');

// 1. Parsing
const filter = NetworkFilter.parse('||domain.com/ads.js$script');

// 2. Matching
filter.match(makeRequest({
  type: 'script',
  url: 'https://domain.com/ads.js',
}, tldts)); // true

Cosmetic Filters

Here is how one can parse and match individual cosmetic filters:

const { CosmeticFilter } = require('@cliqz/adblocker');

// 1. Parsing
const filter = CosmeticFilter.parse('domain.*,domain2.com###selector');

// 2. The `match` method expects a hostname and domain as arguments
filter.match('sub.domain.com', 'domain.com'); // true

Filters Engine

Manipulating filters at a low level is useful to build tooling or debugging, but to perform efficient matching we need to use FiltersEngine which can be seen as a "container" for both network and cosmetic filters. The filters are organized in a very compact way and allow fast matching against requests.

const { FiltersEngine } = require('@cliqz/adblocker');

const engine = FiltersEngine.parse(`
! This is a custom list
||domain.com/ads.js$script

###selector
domain.com,entity.*##+js(script,args1)
`);

// It is possible to serialize the full engine to a typed array for caching
const serialized = engine.serialize();
const deserialized = FiltersEngine.deserialize(serialized);

// Matching network filters
const {
  match, // `true` if there is a match
  redirect, // data url to redirect to if any
  exception, // instance of NetworkFilter exception if any
  filter, // instance of NetworkFilter which matched
} = engine.match(new Request(...));

// Matching CSP (content security policy) filters
const directives = engine.getCSPDirectives(new Request(...));

// Matching cosmetic filters
const {
  styles, // stylesheet to inject in the page
  scripts, // Array of scriptlets to inject in the page
} = engine.getCosmeticFilters('sub.domain.com', 'domain.com');

Release Checklist

To publish a new version:

1. Bump ENGINE_VERSION in engine.ts (to invalidate serialized versions)
2. Create a new branch (e.g.: release-x.y.z)
3. Update version in package.json
4. Update CHANGELOG.md
5. Create a release commit (e.g.: "Release vx.y.z")
6. Create a PR for the release
7. Merge and create a new Release on GitHub
8. Travis takes care of the rest!

License

Mozilla Public License 2.0