Suggestions for improving maintainability and use the library as a NPM package

[mrauhu]

Hello, @abrahamjuliot.

I want to implement best practices in the tooling based on the Vite repository.

The goal is to make it easier for maintainers to participate in the project and allow users use the library as a NPM package.

Checklist

Zero changes to the code

• Use Prettier and create .prettierrc.
• Use .editorconfig and synchronize it with the Prettier standard.
• Update .gitignore: add .vscode and .idea directories, because we're using Prettier and Editorconfig instead.
• Use eslint-plugin-prettier that enables eslint-config-prettier instead of eslint-config-google (unmaintained).
• Use eslint-plugin-only-warn to downgrade ESLint errors to warnings.
• Create lint script in package.json.

Minor changes to the code

• Disable sending requests to the server API by default (for stand-alone usage).
• Create monorepo for client and server packages.

Minor changes to the package code: syntax and typing

• Run lint on all codebase.
• Typization. Fix TypeScript types errors (don't use any type).

Minor changes in the package.json and Github Actions

• Use Vite for development (includes ESBuild for TypeScript and CSS building and minifying, PostCSS and Rollup for production builds) and simplify package.json dev dependencies.
• Set minimal version of Node.js to 16 and use latest build-in NPM version (with workspaces) or Pnpm instead Yarn (outdated).
• Remove the express package (use vite preview).
• Move tests/ from docs/, and use docs/ directory as built result instead of public/.
• Rename package name in package.json from creepjs to creep-js (as example), because there is already a package with same name in the NPM Registry.
• Make tree-shakable CommonJS (CJS) and ECMAScript Modules (ESM) exports for client API functions.
• Add support for publishing package to the NPM Registry via .github/workspaces.

Major changes to the code

• Split the src/**/*.ts file into views and client API functions.
• Create server API for stand-alone usage instead of the https://creepjs-api.web.app/ with closed sources.

---

1. Are you ready to accept such changes?
2. May I create a one pull request with all suggested features?

Best wishes, Sergey.

[abrahamjuliot]

Hey @mrauhu Thank you for the well outlined suggestions.

Let's pause on making all these changes. We do want to avoid creating a fingerprinting library package. The primary goal is only to promote research and education on the subject of browser fingerprinting.

linting, types, etc

Good tips. I will look into this. Just ported the js to ts recently (a work in progress). The goal is to convert all .ts files to strict types (no any or ts-ignore) and split up functions into subdirectories (utils, constants, template, types).

disable default API request

This is on my mind.

package.json

These are all great tips. I will look at each.

/docs is sort of a final release for GitHub pages. public is a commit staging environment for mass browser testing. docs/tests is for playground fingerprinting ideas. I intend to add functional tests soon (Playwright and Jest).

[mrauhu]

@abrahamjuliot thank you for response.