Free JavaScript obfuscators?

Question

I'm looking for a free JavaScript obfuscator. Would compression be enough? What tools would you recommend? Of course, I don't need military-style obfuscation, I need a simple way to prevent kiddies from stealing my javascript by looking at the source or by using something simple such as unescape().

Thanks, Tom

Or, you could just stop worrying about people "stealing" the source of your web page. Either you want it out there, or you don't. Why would you come to a web site that's all about helping people learn to code, to ask for help preventing people from learning from your code? — Coderer, Nov 07 '08 at 15:08

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 07 '08 at 16:19

16

Your problem is that no matter how much you compress it or hide it, eventually the browser has to interpret it. The best you can do is renaming all variables to meaningless random vars, and removing all comments and whitespace.

A few good tools:

edited Nov 07 '08 at 16:19

Patrick Desjardins

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answered Nov 07 '08 at 15:09

Loki

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Just like you can recognize structures and replace them as part of code optimization, you can recognize structures and replace them specifically to make code harder to follow. It tends to still be breakable, make things slower and use more ram, but companies sell tools to do it. – Louis Gerbarg Nov 07 '08 at 15:46
I think its not a good solution, you can deobfuscate the code with http://jsbeautifier.org/. – Afshin Mehrabani Nov 02 '12 at 04:14

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 08 '08 at 07:54

5

You can use /packer/

http://dean.edwards.name/packer/

answered Nov 08 '08 at 07:54

Imran

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Doesn't work. You can simply deobfuscate the code with http://jsbeautifier.org/ – Afshin Mehrabani Nov 02 '12 at 04:13
Did you enable "Shrink variables" and "Base62 encode" options? – Imran Nov 02 '12 at 08:37

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 07 '09 at 22:58

As a rule of thumb, do not use a obfuscator that uses eval since this will slow down your page, use a compressor that doesn't. This will provide obfuscation for newbies, anyone else will not be deterred by any obfuscator anyway.

Most obfuscators will create a strings representing the code in the end and then use eval, this can be undone by a simple alert statements, whats the point?

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 07 '08 at 15:17

3

If you want simple obfuscation and excellent compression, I can recommend the YUI Compressor from Yahoo.

answered Nov 07 '08 at 15:17

Loris

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 13 '09 at 07:51

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Check out For those looking - http://javascript-reference.info/javascript-obfuscators-review.htm - pretty good overview of JS obfuscators

answered Jul 13 '09 at 07:51

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 07 '09 at 22:52

0

Try http://digua.sourceforge.net.

answered Sep 07 '09 at 22:52

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 07 '08 at 16:14

0

I will second the recommendation for YUI Compressor as well, works very well and can compress and obfuscate, also makes recommendations on javascript coding.

answered Nov 07 '08 at 16:14

NBRed5

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 13 '08 at 14:42

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I vote for Packer as well. There are online versions, Standalone Versions, and even a Console Version that I use to Automagically pack my javascripts when I build my web apps.

answered Nov 13 '08 at 14:42

Jeff Sheldon

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maybe your answer is more about compression then obfuscation? – tomasb Jan 28 '15 at 16:45
My answer was a touch more relevant over 6 years ago when it was posted. Maybe not so much now. Better question is why are you commented on a 6 year old answer to a closed question? – Jeff Sheldon Jan 28 '15 at 19:12

score -1 · Answer 9 · edited Jun 10 '12 at 10:43

-1

http://www.javascriptobfuscator.com/Default.aspx

http://ajaxian.com/archives/utility-javascript-obfuscator

edited Jun 10 '12 at 10:43

Jared Farrish

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answered Nov 07 '08 at 15:06

Bruno Shine

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Free JavaScript obfuscators?

9 Answers9

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