Prior Art

Dan Dascalescu / @dandv

iDoRecall, Inc.
2015-Jul-30

Show of hands

Who has a Gravatar?

Who knows about Gmail subaddresses?

you+anything@gmail.com

ddascalescu+meteor@gmail.com

Nice because I can filter all Meteor stuff!

y.o.u@gmail.com

same as you@gmail.com

There are more providers like that

  • FastMail

  • Google Apps for Work

Most SaaS don't know about subsddresses

We need to "normalize" email addresses...

Simple enough, no?

function normalizeEmail(email) {

  var emailParts = email.split(/@/);
  var user = emailParts[0];
  var domain = emailParts[1];

  user.replace(/\./g, '');
  user = user.split('+')[0];

  return user + '@' + domain;
}

Not really...

  • Yahoo! has '-', not '+'
  • Which domains support '+'?
  • How about Google Apps for Work?
  • etc.

So let's search for a library

Only one written in JS...
with a bug on sight

1. Only now should we create our own

2. We should mention the Prior Art

"Prior Art"

"Prior art (state of the art or background art), [...], constitutes all information that has been made available to the public [...] that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality."

Takeaways

  1. Don't reinvent the wheel

  2. If you do reinvent it, mention the Prior Art

Very few mention prior art

Why mention prior art

  • Shows you've done your research
  • Helps the user pick among alternatives
  • You can actually learn from your research - mistakes, pitfalls, features, APIs etc.

Some better wheels from iDoRecall

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