express-badbots

Keep Bots And Crawlers Away From Your Express App

This is an updated version of @jeremyscalpello/express-nobots. Since there is no activity for so long, decided to clone and update to fix some minor bugs, update bots list and publish! All credit goes to @jeremyscalpello!

This simple to integrate module uses the user-agent header to determine whether or not a request is made from a bot, and if so, either blocks it or tags the request.

Installation

npm install express-badbots --save

Usage

Make sure to include this as the first middleware!

Blocking Bots (sends 401 unauthorised):

var noBots = require('express-badbots');
 
....
 
app.use(noBots());
//or
app.use(noBots({block:true}));

Tagging Bots (this will set req.isBot to true if a bot makes a request):

var noBots = require('express-badbots');
 
....
 
app.use(noBots({block:false}));

Request from a bot with block set to false:

...
console.log(req.isBot);
//true
...

If you are going to use this package in web projects, need to allow crawlers to access the files.

In that case need to disable the isApi option to false. By default, isApi option is set to true.

var noBots = require('express-badbots');
 
....
 
app.use(noBots({isApi:false}));

Changes from : v2.0:

If you need to log attacks in DB, need to specify the required database details like below.

var noBots = require('express-badbots');

// 1. To Block Bots
const bot_config = {
    dbHost:process.env.HOST,
    dbDialect:process.env.DIALECT,
    dbName:process.env.DATABASE,
    dbUser:process.env.USERNAME,
    dbPass:process.env.PASSWORD,
    block:true,
    tableName: tableName,
    trackLocation: true
};

app.use(noBots(bot_config));

This plugin use sequelize for inserting log data in DB.

If you need to track the Location of Request, need to enable trackLocation property to true in bot_config (Refer above config)