Preserving Nodejs apps with the use of jscrambler

Developing Node.js applications that have critical logic and thus we want to prevent reverse-engineering, authorized violations, and interference, Jscrambler is a necessity.Node.js is an exceptionally popular and open-source JavaScript RE to create server-side apps.

Firstly, We have to install the latest version of npm on the local.  

npm update -g npm

After that,  Let's go ahead and use a very simple "Hello World" Express app. First, let's install Express:

npm install express --save

Then, we will create an app.js file in our project's root folder using the below code as provided in the Express website:

const express = require('express')

const app = express()

const port = 3000

app.get('/', (req, res) => {

  res.send('Hello World!')

})app.listen(port, () => {

  console.log(`Example app listening at http://localhost:${port}`)

})

A server is started by the app which listens on port 3000 for connections. The app responds with “Hello World!” for requests to the root URL (/) or route.

If we run the app with:

node app.js

Also Read: Top 5 Software Tools a Web Developer Should Have.

Integrating Jscrambler

Grunt: Grunt is a JavaScript task runner with the aim of integrating repetitive tasks like mitigation, collection, unit testing, code safety, etc. In this instance, it is a profitable option to make certain that the source code of your Node.js app is always protected at build time.

We will begin with Grunt by installing it as a dev dependency as shown below: 

npm install grunt --save-dev

Next, we will create a configuration file for Grunt, Gruntfile.js. This file contains our project and Grunt task configuration and loads Grunt plugins and tasks.To keep things simple, let's set up a basic Gruntfile:

module.exports = function(grunt) {grunt.initConfig({ pkg: grunt.file.readJSON('package.json')});};

Now, we will add the Jscrambler Grunt plugin:

npm install grunt-jscrambler --save-dev

Now that the plugin is installed, we will add the following line at the bottom to enable it in our Gruntfile:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-jscrambler');

Right after this line, we have to set the "default" Grunt task with:

grunt.registerTask('default', ['jscrambler']);

After its completion, we must also specify the task itself. We will do that by using some parts of the jscrambler.json file we downloaded earlier: accessKey, secretKey, applicationId, and the params array. The final result of our Gruntfile.js file will be somewhat like this:

module.exports = function(grunt) {grunt.initConfig({pkg: grunt.file.readJSON('package.json'),

 jscrambler: { main: {options: {keys: {

              accessKey: 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY',

              secretKey: 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY'

            },applicationId: 'YOUR_APPLICATION_ID',

            params: [

                {  "name": "objectPropertiesSparsing"},

                { "name": "variableMasking" },

                { "name": "whitespaceRemoval” },

                { "name": "identifiersRenaming","options": {"mode": "SAFEST” } },

                  {"name": "dotToBracketNotation"},

                 { "name": "stringConcealing"},

              {  "name": "functionReordering"},

                  { "options": { "freq": 1,"features": [ "opaqueFunctions”]

                    }, "name": "functionOutlining },

    { "name": "propertyKeysObfuscation"

 "options": {"encoding": ["hexadecimal"]} },

   { "name": "regexObfuscation" },

 { "name": "booleanToAnything"}] },

 files: [{expand: true, src: ['app.js'], dest: 'dist/'}, 

] }}});

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-jscrambler');

grunt.registerTask('default', ['jscrambler']);

 };

Upon looking closely at files array, we will find that Jscrambler will use the app.js file to protect it and then place the protected version on the dist/ folder. You can tweak them as per your project's objectives. Now, all that's left is to make sure that our build process is using Grunt. For our case, we should ensure the availability of a script in our package.json file to build our app using Grunt:

"scripts": {  "build": "grunt"  },

We're now ready to run our build:

npm run build

Henceforth, If we will check our /dist/app.js file, we will see that it has been obfuscated with Jscrambler.

Also Read: An Introduction To Deno.JS

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