Nightfall Node.js SDK

Embed Nightfall scanning and detection functionality into Node.js applications

Features

This SDK provides JavaScript/TypeScript bindings for the Nightfall API. It allows you to add functionality to your applications to scan plain text and files in order to detect different categories of information. You can leverage any of the detectors in Nightfall's pre-built library, or you may programmatically define your own custom detectors.

Additionally, this library provides convenience features such as encapsulating the steps to chunk and upload files.

To obtain an API Key, login to the Nightfall dashboard and click the section titled "Manage API Keys".

See our developer documentation for more details about integrating with the Nightfall API.

Dependencies

The Nightfall Node.js SDK is compiled to ES2018 and supports Node.js v10.0.0 or later.

For a full list of external dependencies please consult package.json.

Installation

NPM

npm install nightfall-js

Yarn

yarn add nightfall-js

Building Locally

Alternatively, if you would like to build the project yourself:

1. Clone this git repository
2. Run npm install from the top-level directory
3. Run npm run build to compile the TypeScript codebase into the ./dist folder (in some cases, you may be required to manually create the ./dist folder before you run this command)
4. Import the client like so: import { Nightfall } from './dist'

Usage

Scanning Plain Text

Nightfall provides pre-built detector types, covering data types ranging from PII to PHI to credentials. The following snippet shows an example of how to scan using pre-built detectors.

Sample Code

// By default, the client reads your API key from the environment variable NIGHTFALL_API_KEY
const nfClient = new Nightfall();

const response = await nfClient.scanText(['My credit card number is 4242-4242-4242-4242'], {
  detectionRules: [
    {
      name: 'Secrets Scanner',
      logicalOp: 'ANY',
      detectors: [
        {
          minNumFindings: 1,
          minConfidence: Detector.Confidence.Possible,
          displayName: 'Credit Card Number',
          detectorType: Detector.Type.Nightfall,
          nightfallDetector: 'CREDIT_CARD_NUMBER',
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

if (response.isError) {
  console.log(response.getError());
} else {
  response.data.findings.forEach((finding) => {
    if (finding.length > 0) {
      finding.forEach((result) => {
        console.log(`Finding: ${result.finding}, Confidence: ${result.confidence}`);
      });
    }
  });
}

Scanning Files

Scanning common file types like PDF's or office documents typically requires cumbersome text extraction methods like OCR.

Rather than implementing this functionality yourself, the Nightfall API allows you to upload the original files, and then we'll handle the heavy lifting.

The file upload process is implemented as a series of requests to upload the file in chunks. This library provides a single method that wraps the steps required to upload your file. Please refer to the API Reference for more details.

The file is uploaded synchronously, but as files can be arbitrarily large, the scan itself is conducted asynchronously. The results from the scan are delivered by webhook; for more information about setting up a webhook server, refer to the docs.

Sample Code

// By default, the client reads your API key from the environment variable NIGHTFALL_API_KEY
const nfClient = new Nightfall();

const response = await nfClient.scanFile('./customer-details.txt', {
  detectionRules: [
    {
      name: 'Secrets Scanner',
      logicalOp: 'ANY',
      detectors: [
        {
          minNumFindings: 1,
          minConfidence: Detector.Confidence.Possible,
          displayName: 'Credit Card Number',
          detectorType: Detector.Type.Nightfall,
          nightfallDetector: 'CREDIT_CARD_NUMBER',
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
  webhookURL: 'https://my-service.com/nightfall/listener',
});

if (response.isError) {
  console.log(response.getError());
}

// Save this ID to check for findings when you receive a webhook event from us
console.log(response.data.id);

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Open a pull request to fix a bug, or open an issue to discuss a new feature or change.

Refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for the full details.

License

This code is licensed under the terms of the MIT License. See here for more information.