isbot

What is isbot?

The 'isbot' npm package is a lightweight utility for detecting bots, crawlers, and spiders based on the user agent string. It helps developers identify non-human traffic to their websites or applications.

What are isbot's main functionalities?

Basic Bot Detection

This feature allows you to check if a given user agent string belongs to a bot. The function returns true if the user agent is identified as a bot, otherwise false.

const isBot = require('isbot');

const userAgent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)';
console.log(isBot(userAgent)); // true

Custom Bot Patterns

You can extend the default bot detection patterns with custom patterns. This is useful if you have specific bots that are not covered by the default list.

const isBot = require('isbot');

isBot.extend(['my-custom-bot']);
const userAgent = 'my-custom-bot';
console.log(isBot(userAgent)); // true

Bot Detection in HTTP Requests

This feature demonstrates how to use 'isbot' to detect bots in incoming HTTP requests. Depending on whether the user agent is a bot, the server responds with a different message.

const isBot = require('isbot');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer((req, res) => {
  if (isBot(req.headers['user-agent'])) {
    res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
    res.end('Hello, bot!');
  } else {
    res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
    res.end('Hello, human!');
  }
}).listen(3000);

Other packages similar to isbot

useragent

The 'useragent' package provides detailed parsing of user agent strings, including bot detection. It offers more comprehensive information about the user agent, such as browser, version, and OS, but may be more complex to use compared to 'isbot'.

express-useragent

The 'express-useragent' package is an Express middleware for parsing user agent strings. It includes bot detection and provides additional details about the user agent. It is specifically designed for use with Express.js applications.

ua-parser-js

The 'ua-parser-js' package is a JavaScript library for parsing user agent strings. It includes bot detection and provides detailed information about the browser, engine, OS, and device. It is a more general-purpose library compared to 'isbot'.

README

isbot 🤖/👨‍🦰

Detect bots/crawlers/spiders using the user agent string.

install

$ npm i isbot

Usage

var isBot = require('isbot');

Simple detection

isBot(req.headers['user-agent'])

isBot('Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)') // true

isBot('Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36') // false

Extending more user agents

Add rules to user agent match RegExp

isBot('Mozilla/5.0') // false

var myList = [
    'istat',
    'newspaper',
    'httpclient',
    '^mozilla/\\d\\.\\d$',
];

isBot.extend(myList);

isBot('Mozilla/5.0') // true

Excluding known crawlers

Remove rules to user agent match RegExp (see existing rules in list.json file)

isBot('Ceramic Tile Installation Guide') // true

var myList = [
	'Ceramic Tile Installation Guide',
	'NORAD National Defence Network'
];

isBot.exclude(myList);

isBot('Ceramic Tile Installation Guide') // false

Verbose result

Return the respective match for bot user agent rule

isBot.find('Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)') // 'bot'

Changelog

3.0.0: Maintainability and performance through automation

The API and code has not changed

Breaking changes

• Remove testing on node 6 and 8
• Some crawlers list updates can potentially change identification

Non breaking changes

• Improve efficiency of rule by optimising some parts and removing others

Testing

• Automatically download crawlers lists for verification
• Add tests to improve efficiency