caniuse-lite

What is caniuse-lite?

The caniuse-lite npm package is a lighter version of the full caniuse database, which provides up-to-date browser support tables for front-end web technologies. It is used for checking the compatibility of web features in different browsers and browser versions.

What are caniuse-lite's main functionalities?

Browser support data retrieval

Retrieve browser support data for a specific feature, such as CSS flexbox.

const caniuse = require('caniuse-lite');
const featureData = caniuse.feature(caniuse.features.flexbox);
console.log(featureData);

Browser usage statistics

Get usage statistics for different versions of a specific browser, like Chrome.

const caniuse = require('caniuse-lite');
const browserStats = caniuse.getBrowserUsageByVersion('chrome');
console.log(browserStats);

Data for browser versions

Retrieve a list of versions for a given browser, such as Firefox.

const caniuse = require('caniuse-lite');
const versions = caniuse.getVersions('firefox');
console.log(versions);

Region-based browser usage statistics

Get browser usage statistics for a specific region, like the United States.

const caniuse = require('caniuse-lite');
const regionUsage = caniuse.getRegion('US');
console.log(regionUsage);

Other packages similar to caniuse-lite

browserslist

The browserslist package allows you to declare the browsers you want to support using queries in a .browserslistrc file or package.json. It is used by tools like Autoprefixer, eslint-plugin-compat, and others to determine which browser versions to support when transpiling or linting code. It differs from caniuse-lite by focusing on defining a list of browsers for tooling rather than providing raw compatibility data.

compat-table

The compat-table package provides data on JavaScript language features and their support across different engines and runtime environments. It is similar to caniuse-lite in that it provides compatibility data, but it focuses specifically on ECMAScript features rather than broader web technologies.

mdn-browser-compat-data

The mdn-browser-compat-data package is a collection of JSON files containing compatibility data for web technologies as provided by the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN). It is similar to caniuse-lite in providing compatibility data but is sourced from MDN documentation and covers a wider range of web technologies, including APIs, CSS, HTML, HTTP, SVG, and more.

README

caniuse-lite

A smaller version of caniuse-db, with only the essentials!

Why?

The full data behind Can I use is incredibly useful for any front end developer, and on the website all of the details from the database are displayed to the user. However in automated tools, many of these fields go unused; it's not a problem for server side consumption but client side, the less JavaScript that we send to the end user the better.

caniuse-lite then, is a smaller dataset that keeps essential parts of the data in a compact format. It does this in multiple ways, such as converting null array entries into empty strings, representing support data as an integer rather than a string, and using base62 references instead of longer human-readable keys.

This packed data is then reassembled (via functions exposed by this module) into a larger format which is mostly compatible with caniuse-db, and so it can be used as an almost drop-in replacement for caniuse-db for contexts where size on disk is important; for example, usage in web browsers. The API differences are very small and are detailed in the section below.

API

import * as lite from 'caniuse-lite';

lite.agents

caniuse-db provides a full data.json file which contains all of the features data. Instead of this large file, caniuse-lite provides this data subset instead, which has the browser, prefix, prefix_exceptions, usage_global and versions keys from the original.

In addition, the subset contains the release_date key with release dates (as timestamps) for each version:

{
  "release_date": {
    "6": 998870400,
    "7": 1161129600,
    "8": 1237420800,
    "9": 1300060800,
    "10": 1346716800,
    "11": 1381968000,
    "5.5": 962323200
  }
}

lite.feature(js)

The feature method takes a file from data/features and converts it into something that more closely represents the caniuse-db format. Note that only the title, stats and status keys are kept from the original data.

lite.features

The features index is provided as a way to query all of the features that are listed in the caniuse-db dataset. Note that you will need to use the feature method on values from this index to get a human-readable format.

lite.region(js)

The region method takes a file from data/regions and converts it into something that more closely represents the caniuse-db format. Note that only the usage data is exposed here (the data key in the original files).

Contributors

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Ben Briggs 💻 📖 👀 ⚠️	Andy Jansson 💻	Andrey Sitnik 💻	Igor Deryabin 💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!

License

The data in this repo is available for use under a CC BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For attribution just mention somewhere that the source is caniuse.com. If you have any questions about using the data for your project please contact me here: http://a.deveria.com/contact