Did you ever want to showcase a site you have worked on or a new feature you just published in a production system but were unable to do so because of the fear of exposing sensitive information?
SafeView is a component that allows you to hide sensitive information in your app visually, for presentation purposes, and more.
In order to hide an element all you need to do is to target it using the data-safe attribute.
const MyComponent = () => {
return (
<div>
<span data-safe>
// Sensitive info
<span>
</div>
)
}
And then when you want to hide press Shift + S.
There is basically no setup involved other than wrapping your app with the <SafeView> component.
The library is super simple and light-weight and is available at NPM.
if you have any question and/or suggestion I would love to answer in the comments. :)
Top comments (35)
Hello,
Am I correct in thinking that simply adding the following CSS would have the exact same effect?
If that is the case I think it would be better to not use an external library with its associated security and maintenance cost.
You are definitely correct.
I actually said exactly that on some of the posts I wrote.
The reason I made it into a library is for my personal comfort and it fits my use cases.
You are more than welcome to use any of the code in library without using it through npm.
Super cool, very useful and unbelievably easy 👌 😀 👍
And this sensitive info actually does not appear in the HTML? Where does it end up?
The sensitive information is still available in the DOM.
As I've mentioned before the library's serves only to hide the sensitive information visibly, for presentation purposes.
Understood. So then basically not helpful regarding sensitive info as I thought. Just wanted confirmation. Thanks!
Is this similar to using feature flags?
No. Feature flags are normally used to ignore specific parts of your code in the deployment so they wont get shipped.
SafeView "hides" existing components.
visually
they still exist when you look in your developer tools.
Thanks Lars, SafeView purpose is not to secure your sensitive information.
You can look at it more like a showcase/presentaion helper.
You sure about that @larsonnn ?
From my experience so far, the code behind the feature flags is shipped, but is not available to the user in the production. Talking from the the frontend perspective though, not sure if in native development we can remove code behind the disabled feature flags in compile step.
We're using feature flags like in a simple if else statement. So the code is shipped and we can switch the flag on and off at runtime.
I'm sure a compile step could remove the code behind the flag, but then you couldn't toggle the flags at runtime
Thanks for sharing your experience :)
Hmm then it's not really secure or "safe".
It's just activating and deactivating.
What did you think the point of it was?
I don't know.. but "safe" doesn't seem like the right word to use here.
When I read the title of the post, "sensitive information" makes me think of API secrets..
If I want to hide something visually, I can provide a global CSS ID for the same purpose myself...
My thought exactly , I'd rather have a component which perhaps encrypts the data or redacts it on toggle or component render.
yeah.. i was thinking something similar.
Sorry about that, didn't mean to mislead anyone.
I think I clearly state in the library that it is only for visual purposes it is NOT secure in anyway by design.
Of course not. I just suggest you change the name to "activate" or "hide" rather than "safe". Because "safe" gives the impression of being a security feature.
But good work and kudos for your efforts.
It's simple, that's the best of it.
Used in a personal project of mine and helped me very much with presentation of the project
Amazing, this will be really usefull
Cool idea! Seems simple to use and useful. Bookmarked for a time of need 📌
thanks! looks great.
mind you the key combination and different filters are already available and can be customized using the component (more on that in the library readme).
Wow this is pretty cool !! Will try using it in my projects