Development

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Where to find the list of supported sites?

The human-readable list of supported sites is available in the sites.md file in the repository. It’s been generated automatically from the main JSON file with the list of supported sites.

The machine-readable JSON file with the list of supported sites is available in the data.json file in the directory resources.

  1. Which methods to check the account presence are supported?

The supported methods (checkType values in data.json) are:

  • message - the most reliable method, checks if any string from presenceStrs is present and none of the strings from absenceStrs are present in the HTML response

  • status_code - checks that status code of the response is 2XX

  • response_url - check if there is not redirect and the response is 2XX

See the details of check mechanisms in the checking.py file.

Testing

It is recommended use Python 3.10 for testing.

Install test requirements:

poetry install --with dev

Use the following commands to check Maigret:

# run linter and typing checks
# order of checks:
# - critical syntax errors or undefined names
# - flake checks
# - mypy checks
make lint

# run black formatter
make format

# run testing with coverage html report
# current test coverage is 58%
make test

# open html report
open htmlcov/index.html

# get flamechart of imports to estimate startup time
make speed

How to fix false-positives

If you want to work with sites database, don’t forget to activate statistics update git hook, command for it would look like this: git config --local core.hooksPath .githooks/.

You should make your git commits from your maigret git repo folder, or else the hook wouldn’t find the statistics update script.

  1. Determine the problematic site.

If you already know which site has a false-positive and want to fix it specifically, go to the next step.

Otherwise, simply run a search with a random username (e.g. laiuhi3h4gi3u4hgt) and check the results. Alternatively, you can use the Telegram bot.

  1. Open the account link in your browser and check:

  • If the site is completely gone, remove it from the list

  • If the site still works but looks different, update in data.json how we check it

  • If the site requires login to view profiles, disable checking it

  1. Find the site in the data.json file.

If the checkType method is not message and you are going to fix check, update it: - put message in checkType - put in absenceStrs a keyword that is present in the HTML response for an non-existing account - put in presenceStrs a keyword that is present in the HTML response for an existing account

If you have trouble determining the right keywords, you can use automatic detection by passing the account URL with the --submit option:

maigret --submit https://my.mail.ru/bk/alex

To disable checking, set disabled to true or simply run:

maigret --self-check --site My.Mail.ru@bk.ru

To debug the check method using the response HTML, you can run:

maigret soxoj --site My.Mail.ru@bk.ru -d 2> response.txt

There are few options for sites data.json helpful in various cases:

  • engine - a predefined check for the sites of certain type (e.g. forums), see the engines section in the JSON file

  • headers - a dictionary of additional headers to be sent to the site

  • requestHeadOnly - set to true if it’s enough to make a HEAD request to the site

  • regexCheck - a regex to check if the username is valid, in case of frequent false-positives

Activation mechanism

The activation mechanism helps make requests to sites requiring additional authentication like cookies, JWT tokens, or custom headers.

Let’s study the Vimeo site check record from the Maigret database:

"Vimeo": {
    "tags": [
        "us",
        "video"
    ],
    "headers": {
        "Authorization": "jwt eyJ0..."
    },
    "activation": {
        "url": "https://vimeo.com/_rv/viewer",
        "marks": [
            "Something strange occurred. Please get in touch with the app's creator."
        ],
        "method": "vimeo"
    },
    "urlProbe": "https://api.vimeo.com/users/{username}?fields=name...",
    "checkType": "status_code",
    "alexaRank": 148,
    "urlMain": "https://vimeo.com/",
    "url": "https://vimeo.com/{username}",
    "usernameClaimed": "blue",
    "usernameUnclaimed": "noonewouldeverusethis7"
},

The activation method is:

def vimeo(site, logger, cookies={}):
    headers = dict(site.headers)
    if "Authorization" in headers:
        del headers["Authorization"]
    import requests

    r = requests.get(site.activation["url"], headers=headers)
    jwt_token = r.json()["jwt"]
    site.headers["Authorization"] = "jwt " + jwt_token

Here’s how the activation process works when a JWT token becomes invalid:

  1. The site check makes an HTTP request to urlProbe with the invalid token

  2. The response contains an error message specified in the activation/marks field

  3. When this error is detected, the vimeo activation function is triggered

  4. The activation function obtains a new JWT token and updates it in the site check record

  5. On the next site check (either through retry or a new Maigret run), the valid token is used and the check succeeds

Examples of activation mechanism implementation are available in activation.py file.

How to publish new version of Maigret

Collaborats rights are requires, write Soxoj to get them.

For new version publishing you must create a new branch in repository with a bumped version number and actual changelog first. After it you must create a release, and GitHub action automatically create a new PyPi package.

1. Make a new branch locally with a new version name. Check the current version number here: https://pypi.org/project/maigret/. Increase only patch version (third number) if there are no breaking changes.

git checkout -b 0.4.0

  1. Update Maigret version in three files manually:

  • setup.py

  • maigret/__version__.py

  • docs/source/conf.py

  1. Create a new empty text section in the beginning of the file CHANGELOG.md with a current date:

## [0.4.0] - 2022-01-03

  1. Get auto-generate release notes:

  • Open https://github.com/soxoj/maigret/releases/new

  • Click Choose a tag, enter v0.4.0 (your version)

  • Click Create new tag

  • Press + Auto-generate release notes

  • Copy all the text from description text field below

  • Paste it to empty text section in CHANGELOG.txt

  • Remove redundant lines ## What’s Changed and ## New Contributors section if it exists

  • Close the new release page

  1. Commit all the changes, push, make pull request

git add -p
git commit -m 'Bump to YOUR VERSION'
git push origin head

  1. Merge pull request

  2. Create new release

  • Open https://github.com/soxoj/maigret/releases/new again

  • Click Choose a tag

  • Enter actual version in format v0.4.0

  • Also enter actual version in the field Release title

  • Click Create new tag

  • Press + Auto-generate release notes

  • Press “Publish release” button

  1. That’s all, now you can simply wait push to PyPi. You can monitor it in Action page: https://github.com/soxoj/maigret/actions/workflows/python-publish.yml

Documentation updates

Documentations is auto-generated and auto-deployed from the docs directory.

To manually update documentation:

  1. Change something in the .rst files in the docs/source directory.

  2. Install pip install -r requirements.txt in the docs directory.

  3. Run make singlehtml in the terminal in the docs directory.

  4. Open build/singlehtml/index.html in your browser to see the result.

  5. If everything is ok, commit and push your changes to GitHub.

Roadmap

Warning

This roadmap requires updating to reflect the current project status and future plans.

https://i.imgur.com/kk8cFdR.png