Is using an obfuscator enough to secure my JavaScript code?

Question

I\'m working on building a development tool that is written in JavaScript.

This will not be an open source project and will be sold (hopefully) as a commercial produ

Answer 1

You're always faced with the fact that any user that comes to your webpage will download some working version of your Javascript source. They will have the source code. Obfuscating it may make it very difficult to be reused by someone with the intent to steal your hard work. However, in many cases someone can even reuse the obfuscated source! Or in the worst case they can unravel it by hand and eventually comprehend it.

An example of a situation like yours might be Google Maps. The Javascript source is clearly obfuscated. However, for really private/sensitive logic they push the data to the server and have the server process that information using XMLHttpRequests (AJAX). With this design you have the important parts on the server side, much more tightly controlled.