✨ Friendly Name Parser

A lightweight, zero-dependency Node.js library for normalizing usernames and comments, with code injection detection (HTML, JS, PHP).

npm install friendly-name-parser

API

new FriendlyNameParser(input) — analysis

Analyzes the input string and returns an object with the following properties:

Property	Type	Description
pretty	string	Normalized, title-cased name
isHTML	boolean	Contains HTML tags
isJS	boolean	Contains JavaScript keywords
isPHP	boolean	Contains PHP code
breakSpaces	boolean	Contains Unicode break spaces
hasMultilineComments	boolean	Contains multiline comments (/* */, <!-- -->)
isPlainText	boolean	true if none of the above flags are set
detected	string[]	List of detected issues, e.g. ['HTML', 'JS']

Static methods

FriendlyNameParser.prettyNick(str) — normalize a display name

Cleans and formats a string into a readable, title-cased display name.

• Removes: URLs, HTML tags, PHP tags, HTML entities, JS keywords, control characters, invalid characters (anything that's not a letter, digit, ' or ~)
• Normalizes: title case (e.g. hello world → Hello World), excessive spaces, dots
• Special: if the input contains an e-mail address, extracts and title-cases the username part
• Keeps: emojis, Unicode letters (all languages)

FriendlyNameParser.cleanNick(str) — sanitize a username/nickname

Strips all potentially harmful or noisy content from a username.

• Removes: URLs, e-mails, HTML tags, PHP tags, HTML entities, JS function calls, JS variable declarations, JS keywords, multiline comments (/* */, <!-- -->), Unicode break/zero-width spaces, control characters
• Normalizes: excessive spaces, multiple dots, space before punctuation
• Keeps: emojis, plain text

FriendlyNameParser.cleanComment(str, options?) — sanitize a user comment

Same as cleanNick but preserves URLs (useful for user-submitted comments or bio text).

• Removes: HTML tags, PHP tags, HTML entities, JS function calls, JS variable declarations, JS keywords, multiline comments (/* */, <!-- -->), Unicode break/zero-width spaces, control characters
• Normalizes: excessive spaces, multiple dots, space before punctuation
• Keeps: URLs, emojis, plain text

Options:

Option	Type	Default	Description
markdown	boolean	false	When true, preserves Markdown syntax: skips multiline comment removal (which would strip # headings), multiple-dot normalization, and space-before-punctuation fixes.

Usage

const FriendlyNameParser = require('friendly-name-parser');

// Static methods
FriendlyNameParser.prettyNick('I LOVE CUTE cats!!! 💞😻');             // "I Love Cute Cats"
FriendlyNameParser.prettyNick('<script>alert("Hello")</script>');       // "Hello"
FriendlyNameParser.prettyNick('sefinek@example.com');                   // "Sefinek"

FriendlyNameParser.cleanNick('sefinek 🐱 https://sefinek.net <b>x</b>');              // "sefinek 🐱 x"
FriendlyNameParser.cleanComment('See https://example.com <b>bold</b> text');          // "See https://example.com bold text"
FriendlyNameParser.cleanComment('# Heading\n**bold** <script>x</script>', { markdown: true }); // "# Heading\n**bold** x"

// Full analysis
const result = new FriendlyNameParser('<script>alert("hello world");</script>');
console.log(result);
// {
//   pretty: 'Hello World',
//   isHTML: true,
//   isJS: true,
//   isPHP: false,
//   breakSpaces: false,
//   hasMultilineComments: false,
//   isPlainText: false,
//   detected: [ 'HTML', 'JS' ]
// }

More examples in the example folder.

Browser

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/friendly-name-parser@2/dist/friendly-name-parser.min.js"></script>

License

Copyright © Sefinek. Licensed under the MIT License.