Profanity 🧼

A JavaScript profanity filter (with TypeScript support)

Getting Started 🚀

Install the package

npm i @2toad/profanity

If you're using Node 11.x or older, you'll need to install Profanity 1.x (e.g., npm i @2toad/profanity@1.4.1)

Usage 📚

import { profanity, CensorType } from '@2toad/profanity';
// or
const { profanity, CensorType } = require('@2toad/profanity');

profanity.exists('I like big butts and I cannot lie');
// true

profanity.exists('I like big glutes and I cannot lie');
// false

profanity.censor('I like big butts (aka arses) and I cannot lie');
// I like big @#$%&! (aka @#$%&!) and I cannot lie

profanity.censor('I like big butts (aka arses) and I cannot lie', CensorType.FirstChar);
// I like big *utts (aka *rses) and I cannot lie

Options ⚙️

Create an instance of the Profanity class to change the default options:

import { Profanity } from '@2toad/profanity';

const profanity = new Profanity({
    wholeWord: false,
    grawlix: '*****',
    grawlixChar: '$',
});

wholeWord 🔤

By default, this is set to true so profanity only matches on whole words:

profanity.exists('Arsenic is poisonous but not profane');
// false

Setting this to false, results in partial word matches:

profanity.exists('Arsenic is poisonous but not profane');
// true (matched on arse)

Compound Words

Profanity detection works on parts of compound words, rather than treating hyphenated or underscore-separated words as indivisible.

When wholeWord is true, each portion of a compound word is analyzed for a match:

profanity.exists("Don't be an arsenic-monster");
// false

profanity.exists("Don't be an arse-monster");
// true (matched on arse)

Setting wholeWord to false, results in partial word matches on each portion of a compound word:

profanity.exists("Don't be an arsenic-monster");
// true (matched on arse)

grawlix 💥

By default this is set to @#$%&!:

profanity.censor('I like big butts and I cannot lie');
// I like big @#$%&! and I cannot lie

Setting this to ****, results in:

profanity.censor('I like big butts and I cannot lie');
// I like big **** and I cannot lie

grawlixChar 💲

When specifying a CensorType other than CensorType.Word, this is the character used by the censor function.

By default this is set to *:

profanity.censor('I like big butts and I cannot lie', CensorType.AllVowels);
// I like big b*tts and I cannot lie

Setting this to $, results in:

profanity.censor('I like big butts and I cannot lie', CensorType.AllVowels);
// I like big b$tts and I cannot lie

Customize the word list 📝

Add words:

profanity.addWords(['aardvark', 'zebra']);

Remove words:

profanity.removeWords(['butt', 'arse']);

Whitelist ✅

The whitelist allows you to specify words that are always ignored by the profanity filter.

This can be useful if you want to enable partial word matching (wholeWord = false), so combined words are caught (e.g., arselicker), while specific words you add to the whitelist are ignored (e.g., arsenic).

Add words to the whitelist:

profanity.whitelist.addWords(['arsenic', 'buttress']);

Remove words from the whitelist:

profanity.whitelist.removeWords(['arsenic', 'buttress']);

Contributing 🤝

So you want to contribute to the Profanity project? Fantastic! Please read the Contribute doc to get started.

2Toad/Profanity