A smaller version of caniuse-db, with only the essentials!

The full data behind Can I use is incredibly useful for any front end developer, and on the website all of the details from the database are displayed to the user. However in automated tools, many of these fields go unused; it's not a problem for server side consumption but client side, the less JavaScript that we send to the end user the better.

caniuse-lite then, is a smaller dataset that keeps essential parts of the data in a compact format. It does this in multiple ways, such as converting null array entries into empty strings, representing support data as an integer rather than a string, and using base62 references instead of longer human-readable keys.

This packed data is then reassembled (via functions exposed by this module) into a larger format which is mostly compatible with caniuse-db, and so it can be used as an almost drop-in replacement for caniuse-db for contexts where size on disk is important; for example, usage in web browsers. The API differences are very small and are detailed in the section below.

import * as lite from 'caniuse-lite';

caniuse-db provides a full data.json file which contains all of the features data. Instead of this large file, caniuse-lite provides this data subset instead, which has the browser, prefix, prefix_exceptions, usage_global and versions keys from the original.

In addition, the subset contains the release_date key with release dates (as timestamps) for each version:

{
  "release_date": {
    "6": 998870400,
    "7": 1161129600,
    "8": 1237420800,
    "9": 1300060800,
    "10": 1346716800,
    "11": 1381968000,
    "5.5": 962323200
  }
}

The feature method takes a file from data/features and converts it into something that more closely represents the caniuse-db format. Note that only the title, stats, status, and shown keys are kept from the original data.

The features index is provided as a way to query all of the features that are listed in the caniuse-db dataset. Note that you will need to use the feature method on values from this index to get a human-readable format.

The region method takes a file from data/regions and converts it into something that more closely represents the caniuse-db format. Note that only the usage data is exposed here (the data key in the original files).

The data in this repo is available for use under a CC BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For attribution just mention somewhere that the source is caniuse.com. If you have any questions about using the data for your project please contact me here: http://a.deveria.com/contact

To report a security vulnerability, please use the Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will coordinate the fix and disclosure.