8 ms·

Go Browser Package

56 points by dineshgowda24 2y ago

llmblockchain 2y ago
"browser" seems like a terrible name. The correct name would be "useragent".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cebert 2y ago
[Dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402738
- richbell 2y ago
  This submission was posted first. You can tell by the id.
silisili 2y ago
This looks pretty useful, kudos. If I had any nit to make, it's about browser.NewBrowser. It stutters, and even with just New(), at first I thought it was making a client. Not sure what I'd go with, maybe Parse like net/url? Again, just a minor nit, not trying to take away what you've done here at all.
- kevindamm 2y ago
  PageReader? HtmlReader?
- dineshgowda24 2y ago
  Yes, it does right. Honestly, I couldn't find a better name. `Parse` sounds nice, so let me think about it.
dlopes7 2y ago
Just a note, this was a bit difficult to read with the amount of times you repeat the phrase “ browser, device, platform, or bot that was making a request to the application”
- floobertoober 2y ago
  Yeah - maybe "user agent"?
- dineshgowda24 2y ago
  Yes, it makes sense. Thanks for the input. I have updated the documentation now.
38 2y ago
please stop doing stuff like this. its trivial to change the user-agent when making a request with a programming language, so any logic surrounding that should be non existent, or as simple as possible. the user-agent string has an essentially arbitrary format, so its not really a good place to be reading data from, or worse serving a different response based on the value.
- zuck_vs_musk 2y ago
  This is useful. If you have a website, you want to collect statistical data on which browsers are accessing your website and test for the best experiences on the top browsers.
  - 38 2y ago
    that sounds nice, but history has shown thats never what happens. what REALLY happens is the most popular browser and even version is determined, and anything thats not that doesn't get tested, and eventually breaks. its the pinnacle of lazy programming. "lets use telemetry so that we can point to data that allows us to make software thats as brittle as possible".
    - philosopher1234 2y ago
      There are limited resources in the world. The bulk of the resources should go to the bulk of the users. It’s a feature that rare configurations are less tested
- tgv 2y ago
  It's a (minor) necessary evil that gives useful information. Almost no-one spoofs their user agent. I use this to pin down problems on the user side. Our users have all kinds of weird devices (e.g. browsing with a PlayStation) and it can be hard to find where things go wrong. There was a case where we lost more users than usual, and it turned out to be something very subtle related to tab switching in Safari. Without the user agent, we would never have found out.
MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
Is this just an ad?
thangngoc89 2y ago
I couldn’t understand what is the context of Browser until I read the first usage example with the line “Mozilla/5.0…”. I immediately understood that this is a user-agent parsing library. I would prefer user-agent which is a well understood term.
- jjice 2y ago
  I know there's a PHP package of the same name. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other packages of the same name and maybe it's just a namesake that continues.
fastest963 2y ago
We use the uap-go (https://github.com/ua-parser/uap-go https://github.com/ua-parser/uap-go) package which parses the uap-core repo and has support for many more browsers.
tgv 2y ago
Not ideal. It is very slow. It takes 8 seconds for 3400 strings. That might be fine for occasional offline usage, but not for frequent usage, and certainly not for use in the backend (although I agree it should not be used there). I guess it matches all regexps against each string. It also misses some really common user agents, basically all iOS 11 and 12. They may be rare nowadays, but they still occur.
- mpcjanssen 2y ago
  It seems to recompile every regex on every matching operation. This is really slow. The compiled regexes should be cached in the different matchers.
  - dineshgowda24 2y ago
    Good point. I didn't give much attention to this part. I run some benchmarks and move these to compile only once. Thank you.
    - dangcoderevue 2y ago
      [dead]
kgeist 2y ago
It lists Sputnik as one of the supported browsers but it's a dead project once developed by the Russian government, and now it seems to be abandoned (last updates in 2021). I'd just delete any mentions of it.

Go Browser Package

56 points by dineshgowda24 2y ago

llmblockchain 2y ago

"browser" seems like a terrible name. The correct name would be "useragent".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

cebert 2y ago

[Dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402738

richbell 2y ago
This submission was posted first. You can tell by the id.

silisili 2y ago

This looks pretty useful, kudos. If I had any nit to make, it's about browser.NewBrowser. It stutters, and even with just New(), at first I thought it was making a client. Not sure what I'd go with, maybe Parse like net/url? Again, just a minor nit, not trying to take away what you've done here at all.

kevindamm 2y ago
PageReader? HtmlReader?
dineshgowda24 2y ago
Yes, it does right. Honestly, I couldn't find a better name. `Parse` sounds nice, so let me think about it.

dlopes7 2y ago

Just a note, this was a bit difficult to read with the amount of times you repeat the phrase “ browser, device, platform, or bot that was making a request to the application”

floobertoober 2y ago
Yeah - maybe "user agent"?
dineshgowda24 2y ago
Yes, it makes sense. Thanks for the input. I have updated the documentation now.

38 2y ago

please stop doing stuff like this. its trivial to change the user-agent when making a request with a programming language, so any logic surrounding that should be non existent, or as simple as possible. the user-agent string has an essentially arbitrary format, so its not really a good place to be reading data from, or worse serving a different response based on the value.

zuck_vs_musk 2y ago
This is useful. If you have a website, you want to collect statistical data on which browsers are accessing your website and test for the best experiences on the top browsers.
- 38 2y ago
  that sounds nice, but history has shown thats never what happens. what REALLY happens is the most popular browser and even version is determined, and anything thats not that doesn't get tested, and eventually breaks. its the pinnacle of lazy programming. "lets use telemetry so that we can point to data that allows us to make software thats as brittle as possible".
  - philosopher1234 2y ago
    There are limited resources in the world. The bulk of the resources should go to the bulk of the users. It’s a feature that rare configurations are less tested
tgv 2y ago
It's a (minor) necessary evil that gives useful information. Almost no-one spoofs their user agent. I use this to pin down problems on the user side. Our users have all kinds of weird devices (e.g. browsing with a PlayStation) and it can be hard to find where things go wrong. There was a case where we lost more users than usual, and it turned out to be something very subtle related to tab switching in Safari. Without the user agent, we would never have found out.

MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago

Is this just an ad?

thangngoc89 2y ago

I couldn’t understand what is the context of Browser until I read the first usage example with the line “Mozilla/5.0…”. I immediately understood that this is a user-agent parsing library. I would prefer user-agent which is a well understood term.

jjice 2y ago
I know there's a PHP package of the same name. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other packages of the same name and maybe it's just a namesake that continues.

fastest963 2y ago

We use the uap-go (https://github.com/ua-parser/uap-go https://github.com/ua-parser/uap-go) package which parses the uap-core repo and has support for many more browsers.

tgv 2y ago

Not ideal. It is very slow. It takes 8 seconds for 3400 strings. That might be fine for occasional offline usage, but not for frequent usage, and certainly not for use in the backend (although I agree it should not be used there). I guess it matches all regexps against each string. It also misses some really common user agents, basically all iOS 11 and 12. They may be rare nowadays, but they still occur.

mpcjanssen 2y ago
It seems to recompile every regex on every matching operation. This is really slow. The compiled regexes should be cached in the different matchers.
- dineshgowda24 2y ago
  Good point. I didn't give much attention to this part. I run some benchmarks and move these to compile only once. Thank you.
  - dangcoderevue 2y ago
    [dead]

kgeist 2y ago

It lists Sputnik as one of the supported browsers but it's a dead project once developed by the Russian government, and now it seems to be abandoned (last updates in 2021). I'd just delete any mentions of it.