botpolice

Canonical URL:
https://alexstevovich.com/a/botpolice-nodejs

Software URL:
https://midnightcitylights.com/software/botpolice-nodejs

botpolice is a simple utility for detecting automated or crawler requests based on the User-Agent heuristics. It checks if the User-Agent string matches common bot names like "bot", "spider", "crawler", and others.

Installation

npm install botpolice

Example

import express from 'express';
import botpolice from 'botpolice';

const app = express();

// Use botpolice to block requests from bots
app.use((req, res, next) => {
    if (botpolice(req)) {
        res.status(403).send('Bot detected!');
    } else {
        next();
    }
});

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.send('Hello, world!');
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('Server running on http://localhost:3000');
});

Function

botpolice(req)

• req: The request object.
• Returns: true if the request is from a bot, false otherwise.

The function checks the User-Agent header in the request and matches it against common bot patterns (e.g., "bot", "spider", "crawler", etc.).

License

Licensed under the MIT License.