spider-detector

A tiny node module to detect spiders/crawlers quickly and comes with optional middleware for ExpressJS

It might be useful when you have a single page app but want to deliver static pages for spiders.

Install

npm install spider-detector // or `yarn install spider-detector`

Direct Example

const detector = require('spider-detector')
detector.isSpider('baiduspider') // return true

ExpressJS example

const detector = require('spider-detector')
const express = require('express')
const app = express()

app.use(detector.middleware())

app.get('/*', function(req, res) {
  if (req.isSpider()) {
    // do something else, i.E. send a static page
  } else {
    // send single page app
  }
})

Why? There are already modules out there

Well, I wanted one which does not use readFileSync and comes with optional middleware. Furthermore some hackers do not classify Googlebot as a spider anymore which poses a problem sometimes, see next question.

What about Googlebot?

Yep, Googlebot is able to deal with single page apps but this feature is pretty unstable. Especially under AngularJS when hash fragments are disabled with $locationProvider.html5Mode(true). That's why - against all odds - I have classified googlebot as a spider in this module.