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I want to make a JavaScript application that's not open source, and thus I wish to learn how to can obfuscate my JS code? Is this possible?
Obfuscation:
Try YUI Compressor. It's a very popular tool, built, enhanced and maintained by the Yahoo UI team.
You may also use:
Google Closure Compiler
UglifyJS
UPDATE: This question was originally asked on 2008, and The mentioned technologies are deprecated. you can use:
terser - more information in web.dev.
Private String Data:
Keeping string values private is a different concern, and obfuscation won't really be of much benefit. Of course, by packaging up your source into a garbled, minified mess, you have a light version of security through obscurity. Most of the time, it's your user who is viewing the source, and the string values on the client are intended for their use, so that sort of private string value isn't often necessary.
If you really had a value that you never wanted a user to see, you would have a couple of options. First, you could do some kind of encryption, which is decrypted at page load. That would probably be one of the most secure options, but also a lot of work which may be unnecessary. You could probably base64 encode some string values, and that would be easier.. but someone who really wanted those string values could easily decode them. Encryption is the only way to truly prevent anyone from accessing your data, and most people find that to be more security than they need.
Sidenote:
Obfuscation in Javascript has been known to cause some bugs. The obfuscators are getting a little better about it, but many outfits decide that they see enough benefit from minifying and gzipping, and the added savings of obfuscation isn't always worth the trouble. If you're trying to protect your source, maybe you'll decide that it's worth your while, just to make your code harder to read. JSMin is a good alternative.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Google's Closure Compiler. It doesn't just minify/compress, it analyzes to find and remove unused code, and rewrites for maximum minification. It can also do type checking and will warn about syntax errors.
JQuery recently switched from YUI Compresser to Closure Compiler, and saw a "solid improvement"
Obfuscation can never really work. For anyone who really wants to get at your code, it's just a speed bump. Worse, it keeps your users from fixing bugs (and shipping the fixes back to you), and makes it harder for you to diagnose problems in the field. Its a waste of your time and money.
Talk to a lawyer about intellectual property law and what your legal options are. "Open Source" does not mean "people can read the source". Instead, Open Source is a particular licensing model granting permission to freely use and modify your code. If you don't grant such a license then people copying your code are in violation and (in most of the world) you have legal options to stop them.
The only way you can really protect your code is to not ship it. Move the important code server-side and have your public Javascript code do Ajax calls to it.
See my full answer about obfuscators here.
You can obfuscate the javascript source all you want, but it will always be reverse-engineerable just by virtue of requiring all the source code to actually run on the client machine... the best option I can think of is having all your processing done with server-side code, and all the client code javascript does is send requests for processing to the server itself. Otherwise, anyone will always be able to keep track of all operations that the code is doing.
Someone mentioned base64 to keep strings safe. This is a terrible idea. Base64 is immediately recognizable by the types of people who would want to reverse engineer your code. The first thing they'll do is unencode it and see what it is.
There are a number of JavaScript obfuscation tools that are freely available; however, I think it's important to note that it is difficult to obfuscate JavaScript to the point where it cannot be reverse-engineered.
To that end, there are several options that I've used to some degree overtime:
YUI Compressor. Yahoo!'s JavaScript compressor does a good job of condensing the code that will improve its load time. There is a small level of obfuscation that works relatively well. Essentially, Compressor will change function names, remove white space, and modify local variables. This is what I use most often. This is an open-source Java-based tool.
JSMin is a tool written by Douglas Crockford that seeks to minify your JavaScript source. In Crockford's own words, "JSMin does not obfuscate, but it does uglify." It's primary goal is to minify the size of your source for faster loading in browsers.
Free JavaScript Obfuscator. This is a web-based tool that attempts to obfuscate your code by actually encoding it. I think that the trade-offs of its form of encoding (or obfuscation) could come at the cost of filesize; however, that's a matter of personal preference.
What i would do:
A. Troll the hacker!
This is will be in the second part my fake/obfuscated secret javascript code LAUNCHER.
The one you see in the source code.
What does this code?
loads the real code
sets a custom header
posts a custom variable
var ajax=function(a,b,d,c,e,f){
e=new FormData();
for(f in d){e.append(f,d[f]);};
c=new XMLHttpRequest();
c.open('POST',a);
c.setRequestHeader("Troll1","lol");
c.onload=b;
c.send(e);
};
window.onload=function(){
ajax('Troll.php',function(){
(new Function(atob(this.response)))()
},{'Troll2':'lol'});
}
B. Obfuscate the code a little
What is that?
thats the same code as above in base64
this is not the SECRET javascript code
(new Function(atob('dmFyIGFqYXg9ZnVuY3Rpb24oYSxiLGQsYyxlLGYpe2U9bmV3IEZvcm1EYXRhKCk7Zm9yKGYgaW4gZCl7ZS5hcHBlbmQoZixkW2ZdKTt9O2M9bmV3IFhNTEh0dHBSZXF1ZXN0KCk7Yy5vcGVuKCdQT1NUJyxhKTtjLnNldFJlcXVlc3RIZWFkZXIoIlRyb2xsMSIsImxvbCIpO2Mub25sb2FkPWI7Yy5zZW5kKGUpO307d2luZG93Lm9ubG9hZD1mdW5jdGlvbigpe2FqYXgoJ1Ryb2xsLnBocCcsZnVuY3Rpb24oKXsgKG5ldyBGdW5jdGlvbihhdG9iKHRoaXMucmVzcG9uc2UpKSkoKX0seydUcm9sbDInOidsb2wnfSk7fQ==')))()
C Create a hard to display php file with the real code inside
What does this php code?
Checks for the right referrer (domain/dir/code of your launcher)
Checks for the custom HEADER
Checks for the custom POST variable
If everything is ok it will show you the right code else a fake code or ban ip, close page.. whatever.
<?php
$t1=apache_request_headers();
if(base64_encode($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])=='aHR0cDovL2hlcmUuaXMvbXkvbGF1bmNoZXIuaHRtbA=='&&$_POST['Troll2']=='lol'&&$t1['Troll1']='lol'){
echo 'ZG9jdW1lbnQuYm9keS5hcHBlbmRDaGlsZChkb2N1bWVudC5jcmVhdGVFbGVtZW50KCdkaXYnKSkuaW5uZXJUZXh0PSdBd2Vzb21lJzsNCg==';//here is the SECRET javascript code
}else{
echo 'd2luZG93Lm9wZW4oJycsICdfc2VsZicsICcnKTt3aW5kb3cuY2xvc2UoKTs=';
};
?>
base64 referrer = http://here.is/my/launcher.html
SECRET javascript = document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('div')).innerText='Awesome';
FAKE = window.open('', '_self', '');window.close();
Now .. if you define event handlers in the SECRET javascript it's probably accessible.. you need to define them outside with the launchcode and pointing to a nested SECRET function.
SO... is there a easy wayto get the code?
document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('div')).innerText='Awesome';
I'm not sure if this works but i'm using chrome and checked Elements,Resources,Network,Sources,Timeline,Profiles,Audits but i didn't find the line above.
note1: if u open the Troll.php url from Inspect element->network in chrome you get the fake code.
note2: the whole code is written for modern browsers. polyfill needs alot more code.
EDIT
launcher.html
<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"><title></title><script src="data:application/javascript;base64,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"></script></head><body></body></html>
Troll.php
<?php $t1=apache_request_headers();if(/*base64_encode($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])=='PUT THE LAUNCHER REFERER HERE'&&*/$_POST['Troll2']=='lol'&&$t1['Troll1']='lol'){echo 'ZG9jdW1lbnQuYm9keS5hcHBlbmRDaGlsZChkb2N1bWVudC5jcmVhdGVFbGVtZW50KCdkaXYnKSkuaW5uZXJUZXh0PSdBd2Vzb21lJzsNCg==';}else{echo 'd2luZG93Lm9wZW4oJycsICdfc2VsZicsICcnKTt3aW5kb3cuY2xvc2UoKTs=';}; ?>
The problem with interpreted languages, is that you send the source to get them working (unless you have a compiler to bytecode, but then again, it is quite trivial to decompile).
So, if you don't want to sacrifice performance, you can only act on variable and function names, eg. replacing them with a, b... aa, ab... or a101, a102, etc. And, of course, remove as much space/newlines as you can (that's what so called JS compressors do).
Obfuscating strings will have a performance hit, if you have to encrypt them and decrypt them in real time. Plus a JS debugger can show the final values...
Try JScrambler. I gave it a spin recently and was impressed by it.
It provides a set of templates for obfuscation with predefined settings for those who don't care much about the details and just want to get it done quickly. You can also create custom obfuscation by choosing whatever transformations/techniques you want.
Contrary to most of the other answers I suggest against YUI Compressor; you should use Google Closure.
Not much because it compresses more, but mostly because it will catch javascript errors such as a = [1,2,3,]; which make IE go haywire.
I can recommend JavaScript Utility by Patrick J. O'Neil. It can obfuscate/compact and compress and it seems to be pretty good at these. That said, I never tried integrating it in a build script of any kind.
As for obfuscating vs. minifying - I am not a big fan of the former. It makes debugging impossible (Error at line 1... "wait, there is only one line") and they always take time to unpack. But if you need to... well.
A non-open-source Javascript-based application is fairly silly. Javascript is a client-side interpreted language.. Obfuscation isn't much protection..
JS obfuscation is usually done to reduce the size of the script, rather than "protect" it. If you are in a situation where you don't want your code to be public, Javascript isn't the right language..
There are plenty of tools around, but most have the word "compressor" (or "minifier") in its name for a reason..
You can't secure client side code: just press F12 on Google Chrome, pause javascript execution and you will get all strings, even those encrypted. Beautify it and rename variables and you will get almost the original code.
If you're writing server side javascript (i.e. NodeJS) is afraid of someone hacking into your server and want to make the hacker work more difficult, giving you more time to get your access back, then use javacript compilers:
You need to use Closure Compiler on Advanced Compilation, as it's the only tool that renames all your variables, even if those are used in multiple files/modules. But it just have a problem: it only work if you write in it's coding style.
I would suggest first minify with something like YUI Compressor, and then convert all string and numbers to HEX Values using something like http://www.javascriptobfuscator.com/
With this, the code would be rendered near impossible to understand and I think at this Stage it will take more time for a Hacker to re-enact your code than actually if he re-wrote from scratch. Rewriting and Cloning is what you cant actually stop. After all we are free-people !
Try this tool Javascript Obfuscator
I used it on my HTML5 game not only it reduced it size from 950KB to 150 but also made the source code unreadable closure compilers and minifiers are reversable I personally dont know how to reverse this obfuscation.
Dean Edward's Packer is an excellent obfuscator, though it primarily obfuscates the code, not any string elements you may have within your code.
See: Online Javascript Compression Tool and select Packer (Dean Edwards) from the dropdown
I'm under the impression that some enterprises (e.g.: JackBe) put encrypted JavaScript code inside *.gif files, rather than JS files, as an additional measure of obfuscation.
I've been using Jasob for years and it is hands down the best obfuscator out there.
It has an advanced UI but is still intuitive and easy to use.
It will also handle HTML and CSS files.
The best way to use it is to prefix all of your private variables with something like an underscore, then use the sort feature to group them all together and check them off as targets for obfuscation.
Users can still view your source, but it's much more difficult to decipher when your private variables are converted from something like _sUserPreferredNickName to a.
The engine will automatically tally up the number of targeted variables and prioritize them to get the maximum compression.
I don't work for Jasob and I get nothing out of promoting them, just offering some friendly advice.
The downside is that it's not free and is a little pricey, but still worth it when stacked against alternatives - the 'free' options don't even come close.
Have you tried Bananascript? It produces highly compressed and completely unreadable code.
I am using Closure-Compiler utility for the java-script obfuscation. It minifies the code and has more options for obfuscation.
This utility is available at Google code at below URL:
Closure Tools
But now a days I am hearing much of UglifyJS. You can find various comparison between Closure Compiler and UglifyJS in which Uglify seems to be a winner.
UglifyJS: A Fast New JavaScript Compressor For Node.js That’s On Par With Closure
Soon I would give chance to UglifyJS.
As a JavaScript/HTML/CSS obfuscator/compressor you can also try Patu Digua.
You definitely should consider taking a look at Obfuscriptor.
I goes beyond the typical Javascript minifying tricks we've seen from other tools such as YUI Compressor or Google Closure.
The obfuscated code looks more like encrypted. Unlike anything I've seen before.
I've used this in the past, and it does a good job. It's not free, but you should definitely take a look.
JavaScript Obfuscator & Encoder
I'm working on a Software as a Service site which we will use backbone primarily, but what I'm noticing is most of the logic for the application is lying on backbone. While we use ruby mostly as just a session controller and a bridge to the database it seems. So our site is very susceptible to being copied. (just a matter of copying the js files...)
I know this may be a dumb question but, is it anyway I can avoid this or would have a client side heavy application like this be bad for this type of application?
I'm not sure on how I can secure this site structure at this point.
Sure it can be copied, that is a risk you take with JavaScript. You have the same problem with your markup and your CSS as well, but I'd say you rarely see someone stealing it anyway. There is probably more to your service than just your code (your design, your copy, your business model, your customer support). Even if they did copy your code, you will probably be able to deliver a better service than them anyway, since your are devoted to your product, which they clearly are not.
Another way of looking at the whole thing is to see it as the beauty of web development. You are free to open up the code of any web page and learn from it.
If you still want to "protect" your code, your best shot is probably to use something like UglifyJS or similar, to minimize and obfuscate your code. Sure the "thief" could then use a prettyfier to get indentation etc. back, but the code will still be obscure and practically impossible to maintain. So it would probably not be worth the job of stealing it in the long run.
Protecting your javascript libraries is hard because you let your clients download them. The best thing you can do to protect them is to run a obfuscation and minification tool on them before you deploy them into production.
I started out with Rails development, but soon I realized Rails without JS is pretty much useless. So, I am trying to play with JS in my free time.
So, what are the "tools of trade (IDEs if any)" for JS development?
My primary focus is usage of APIs, Ajax etc, so that I don't get lost when I get develop Rails apps which uses JS.
There are many tutorials for using JS for Open graph API or twitter API, but that is to get things done and abstract some feature sets which a beginner should know.
I generally start learning a language by making a calculator, end to end (always works for me). But I cannot make a calculator and use API/Ajax calls.
So, what are your suggestions?
PS: I am aware about Douglas Crockford's video lectures, they are awesome, but I need some thing more concrete.
UPDATE:
My 2 original questions:
1. What are the tools of trade for JS? Like Eclipse:Java::X:Javascript, What is X (multiple Xs are allowed)?
2. What sample app do you recommend for me to start with?
I think the most important thing is: Know your language!
JavaScript libraries are useful, but if your do not know the language, you have no chance of getting something done that cannot be achieved using your library of choice. For example: JavaScript's prototype-system is very valuable and important for building robust applications. I really recommend that you experiment with this before diving into something you barely know. Closures are also very important to understand.
One thing is important, though: Do not spend too much time on browser incompatibilities. This is what most libraries are for. What you need to know is how the language works. Implementation-specific things are not worth learning (in most cases), since somebody already fixed those for you.
#PS: Douglas Crockford indeed does a pretty awesome job on explaining how JavaScript really works. You should keep watching this.
#UPDATE:
I think the X has it's origin in JavaScript's MIME-type: application/x-javascript. My tool of choice for web-development (including JavaScript) is NetBeans IDE. I use it in my workplace and it is very reliable and comfortable to work with. This is subjective (of course). Most other IDE's will do, too.
This is difficult to answer. I will update my post if something comes to my mind.
(I realize my comments below typically refer to using javascript with regards to websites, so ymmv if you're using js for a different environment, like couchDB)
For an ide, any text editor will do, but I prefer convenient features like:
syntax coloring (because it's so pretty)
(s)ftp plugins - makes saving files convenient
I would probably go with something like notepad++, or aptana studio (although I find aptana to be a bit of overkill at times, but very powerful). Adobe Dreamweaver works nicely too, if you wanna pay. Otherwise, the bare minimum would be notepad and an ftp client (again, with regards to front-end web development work)
For debugging or trying out quick javascript, I find safari's and chrome's built-in development tools handy, but on firefox, it's firebug all the way. Firebug is awesome.
I notice that in my work environment that some people (particularly the business side) use the words javascript and the DOM interchangably, but I find that their attempts at explaining something simply leads to confusion. That being said, if you're writing web apps, I find the mozilla DOM reference to be pretty awesome and used to hit it up all the time before I got familiar: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM
Actually developer.mozilla.org is overall pretty awesome.
Other than that, getting started is simply a matter of learning the syntax. I would probably get used to the syntax first (which should be pretty quick anyways) before I start thinking about other concepts like learning how to prototype and whatnot (which you can look up on this site).
A framework like jQuery is very convenient for various repetitive tasks, but I wouldn't necessarily jump straight into using jQuery without being familiar with the js syntax first.
The most important thing you should learn is jQuery. It is now the de facto standard javascript library.
jQuery is great regardless of what you are doing with it, but since you mentioned AJAX, I'll point out that jQuery makes AJAX stupid easy, because you can do things like this:
$.ajax({
url: 'some/ajax/endpoint',
success: function(data) {
// do something with data
}
});
Obviously there are a lot of other options you can pass along, but the basic structure is really simple and easy to use.
jQuery also has a really powerful syntax for selecting parts of the DOM and adding events. For example, if you wanted to catch anytime some clicked on an image and tell them the image src, you can do something like this:
$('img').click(function() {
alert($(this).attr('src'));
});
I'm considering to try out an idea, mostly for fun, and my question is if this is reasonable and if there are any libraries or frameworks that could make this experiment a little easier.
So, the idea: Basically it is to write a new UI for a website I've developed, but doing it with client-side code only. I can read/write data using ajax, since my existing website has an API that allows me to perform all kinds of queries. This allows me to use JavaScript for the whole thing and theoretically put all of the code in a single file.
Obviously there are limitations to circumvent; bookmarking, page refreshing, the back-button etc. But these limitations are what makes it interesting, right? :) I'm not so worried about search engine indexing, since one has to be logged in to use the site anyway.
The site itself is not overly complex, but it is not simple either. There are four different levels of users, multiple languages and quite a lot of data to be presented.
Is this a bad idea? If so, why would you advice against it? And do you know of any JavaScript frameworks or libraries that could make this easier? (And no, I'm not looking for an abstraction like Google Web Toolkit; I would like something purely JavaScript)
One of my coworkers did this. A nice feature of this concept was that you don't have a ton of POSTS whenever the user 'changes pages', since they are actually not ever changing a page until they submit their data for the final time. He did this for product registration software, which was nice. Our servers were only taking a hit when the user initially requested the page, and then when they submitted it.
The major, MAJOR downside to this concept is that most web developers are not expecting this. My coworker (and you) have a cool idea - but unless it is well implemented, with comments, 100% valid HTML, and a host of other good design principles in place, it can be confusing since most web developers have basically never seen this done before. His site was a nightmare to work with, as he did not actually know what engineering web software meant, and it was all slapped together. My organization never pursued this (potentially useful) idea because his implementation was so poor.
So, when I looked at this idea here were the trade-off I came up with:
1.) You cannot require any server-side interaction during intermediate pages.
2.) The initial page loading is longer, but there are no intermediate page requests (better optimization).
3.) This is vastly different than anything anyone usually does, which means you need to be especially careful with documentation.
4.) This design concept facilitates totally stand-alone web software to be easily deployed without the web.
5.) You might be increasing complexity for avoiding page loads, but maybe not. I'm not sure.
All together, I think it just depends on what you want to accomplish. My coworker really just wanted to see if he could do it, which he could. However, how he did it was really pretty bad, to the point where everyone else connected his poor implementation with a poor idea it was fairly sad.
Mostly, I think if you follow good web design practices this wouldn't be too bad of a thing to pursue. What are your goals though?
I'm sorry I couldn't directly answer all of your questions. I hope my experiences are still helpful in answering if I think it is a bad idea or not.
-Brian J. Stinar-
SproutCore is one of the best out there when it comes to really being built from the ground up for single-page, potentially complex applications. Unlike some others like GWT or Cappucino, SproutCore is really about using JavaScript directly. They aren't the only one though. You might also want to look at JavaScriptMVC and qooxdoo.
Personally, I've built an extremely large and complex single-page application using JavaScript. It is currently around 100,000 lines (including comments/whitespace). To give a sense of scale, jQuery is around 6,000. To reach that size, I built my own framework, build tools etc. and it is extremely maintainable. You're asking if it can work, and I can tell you that it does, but you do need a little infrastructure if you're looking at doing something big. (BTW, there's a lot of lazy loading - its not 100,000 lines all at once!)
I also wouldn't really recommend this method for anything other than a web application. As pointed out, its still difficult for SEO, and may be strange for some users.
You're looking for ExtJS
I did my site like that in jquery, backed by spring mvc 3. For me it works fine and you have a lightweight, flashy feling while on it.
If you have time to dig in javascript seriously... it is really good exercise.
The only thing I really need to add is SEO, since spiders see only intial html. If it is important for you, i think backend static files and sitemap would be good enough solution.
I found something very light-weight that provides the basic needed functionally without forcing you into a whole framework. It's called Sammy and is inspired by Ruby's Sinatra: http://code.quirkey.com/sammy/
Very recommended!
Alternative: code the same in Java. Take a look to ItsNat
Think in JavaScript but code the same in Java in server with the same DOM APIs, in server is way easier to manage your application without custom client/bridges because UI and data are together.
Regarding SEO, bookmarking etc in single page there are solutions, take a look to the Single Page Interface Manifesto
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 product.
I'm looking for the best way to protect my investment. Is using an obfuscator (code mangler) enough to reasonably secure the code?
Are there other alternatives that I am not aware of?
(I'm not sure if obfuscator is the right word, it's one of the apps that takes your code and makes it very unreadable.)
I'm going to tell you a secret. Once you understand it, you'll feel a lot better about the fact that Javascript obfuscation is only really useful for saving bandwidth when sending scripts over the wire.
Your source-code is not worth stealing.
I know this comes as a shock to the ego, but I can say this confidently without ever having seen a line of code you've written because outside the very few realms of development where serious magic happens, it's true of all source-code.
Say, tomorrow, someone dumped a pile of DVDs on your doorstep containing the source code for Windows Vista. What would you be able to do with it? Sure, you could compile it and give away copies, but that's just one step more effort than copying the retail version. You could painstakingly find and remove the license-checking code, but that's something some bright kid has already done to the binaries. Replace the logo and graphics, pretend you wrote it yourself and market it as "Vicrosoft Mista"? You'll get caught.
You could spend an enormous amount of time reading the code, trying to understand it and truly "stealing the intellectual property" that Microsoft invested in developing the product. But you'd be disappointed. You'd find the code was a long series of mundane decisions, made one after the other. Some would be smarter than you could think of. Some would leave you shaking your head wondering what kind of monkeys they're hiring over there. Most would just make you shrug and say "yeah, that's how you do that."
In the process you'll learn a lot about writing operating systems, but that's not going to hurt Microsoft.
Replace "Vista" with "Leopard" and the above paragraphs don't change one bit. It's not Microsoft, it's software. Half the people on this site could probably develop a Stack Overflow clone, with or without looking at the source of this site. They just haven't. The source-code of Firefox and WebKit are out there for anyone to read. Now go write your own browser from scratch. See you in a few years.
Software development is an investment of time. It's utter hubris to imagine that what you're doing is so special that nobody could clone it without looking at your source, or even that it would make their job that much easier without an actionable (and easily detectable) amount of cut and paste.
I deeply disagree with most answers above.
It's true that every software can be stolen despite of obfuscation but, at least, it makes harder to extract and reuse individual parts of the software and that is the point.
Maybe it's cheaper and less risky to use an obfuscation than leaving the code open and fighting at court after somebody stole the best parts of our software and made dangerous concurrency.
Unobfuscated code whispers:
Come on, analyze me, reuse me. Maybe you could make a better software using me.
Obfuscated code says:
Go away dude. It's cheaper to use your own ideas than trying to crack me.
You are going to be fighting a losing battle if you try to obfuscate your code in the hopes of someone not stealing it. You may stop the casual browser from getting at it, but someone dedicated would almost certainly be able to overcome any measure you use.
In the past I have seen people do several things:
Paste a lot of whitespace at the top of the page with a message telling people that the code is unavailable, when in actuality you just need to scroll down a few pages to get at it.
Running it through an encoder of some kind, this is so so useful as it can just be run through the decoder.
Another method is to reduce variable names to one character and remove whitespace (this is also an efficiency thing).
There are many other methods.
In the end, your efforts are only likely to stop the casual browser from seeing your stuff. If someone dedicated comes along then there is not much you will be able to do. You will have to live with this.
My advice would be to make a really awesome product that attracts the most people and beat off any competition by having the best product/service/community and not the most obfuscated code.
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.
That's probably about the best you can do. Just be aware that anybody with enough dedication, can probably de-obfuscate your program. Just make sure you're comfortable with that before embarking on your project. I think the biggest problem with this would be to control who's using it on their site. If somebody goes to a site with your code on it, and likes what it does, it doesn't matter that they don't understand what the code does, or can't read it, when they can just copy the code, and use it on their own site.
A obfuscator won't help you at all if someone wants to figure out the code. The code still exists on the client machine and they can grab a copy of it and study it at their leisure.
There is simply no way to hide code written in Javascript since the source code has to be handed to the browser for execution.
If you want to hide your code, you have the following options:
1) Use an environment where compiled code (not source) is downloaded to the client, e.g. Flash or Silverlight. I'm not even sure that's foolproof, but it's certainly much better than Javascript.
2) Have a back end on the server side that does the work and a thin client that just makes requests to the server.
I'd say yes, it's enough if you also make sure than you compress the code as well using a tool like Dean Edward's Packer or similar. If you think about what is possible with tools like .NET Reflector in terms of reverse engineering compiled code / IL in .NET, you realize that there's nothing you can do to completely protect your investment.
On the other hand, remember that folks who release their source code also seem to make do quite nicely anyway - it's their experience that people want more than their intellectual property.
code obfuscator is enough for something that needs minimal protection, but I think it will definitely not enough to really protect you. if you are patient you can realy de-mangle the whole thing.. and i'm sure there are programs to do it for you.
That being said, you can't stop anyone from pirating your stuff because they'll eventually will break any kind of protection you create anyway. and it is espcially easy in scripted language where the code is not compiled.
If you are using some other language, maybe java or .NET, You can try doing things like "calling home" to verify that a license number matches a given url. Which works if you your app is some sort of online app that is going to be connected online all the time. But having access to the source, people can easily bypass that part.
In short, javascript is a poor choice for what you are doing.
A step up from what you are doing is maybe using a webservice backend to get your data. Let the webservice handle the authentication/verification process. Requires a bit of work to make sure it is bulletproof, but it might work
If this is for a website, which by its very nature puts viewing of its code one menu click away, is there really any reason to hide anything? If someone wants to steal your code they will most likely go through the effort of making even the most mangled code human readable. Look at commercial websites, they don't obfuscate their code, and no one goes out and steals code from the google apps. If you are really worried about code theft, I would argue for writing it in some other compiled language. (which does of course destroy the whole webapp thing...) Even then, you aren't totally safe, there are many de-compilers out there.
So really, there is no way to do what you want in the face of anyone with sufficient motivation.