Libscore


Libscore is a web-based tool that scans the one-million most popular websites to collect statistics on JavaScript library usage. It collects data on jQuery plugins, JavaScript variables produced by non-jQuery plugins, and JavaScript libraries loaded via RequireJS.
Libscore provides tools intended to help developers and technical analysts compare the relative popularity of web frameworks and third-party web tools.
Libscore was developed via a co-sponsorship by Stripe and DigitalOcean.

History

Libscore's founder, Julian Shapiro, created the project in 2014 while he was on a web development grant awarded by Stripe, a major payments processing company. While developing Libscore, he brokered a partnership with DigitalOcean to participate as the project's second and final sponsor. Stripe provides legal resources and covers the cost of Libscore's development, while DigitalOcean lends its technical resources to perform the monthly crawling.
In May 2015, Libscore was nominated for a Net Award after competing with over 1,000 other submissions.
In June 2015, Libscore 2.0 was released, which introduced the ability to compare the popularity of libraries over time. It also provided comparative graphing, for comparing library growth trends against one another, and auto-suggest to make library searching easier.

Behavior

Libscore scans the top million sites on the web to determine which third-party JavaScript libraries are installed on each site. Developers can use this data to determine which libraries are trending in popularity, which libraries are in use on popular sites, and how libraries' market penetrations compare. This data helps developers perform competitive analysis and make informed decisions when choosing libraries to work with.
For each site Libscore scans, it runs heuristics to determine which window variables are produced by third-party JavaScript libraries. In addition, it catalogues the presence of external JavaScript scripts. Thereafter, via the Libscore homepage, users can search through the aggregated data in order to:
Libscore also provides monthly statistics on the top libraries, scripts, and sites, in addition to regularly publishing showcasing library adoption percentages.
There is also a Libscore API that provides developers programmatic access to Libscore's monthly data.