A love story written
in JavaScript
@soyguijarro
👨💻 Web engineer from Madrid
💼 Dev tools at Undefined Labs
🤩 JavaScript, React, Web APIs
🗣️ International tech speaker
🎓 Adalab bootcamp volunteer
💖 Community and inclusion
Ramón
Guijarro
@soyguijarro
Problems with
dating apps
The hard facts
Most popular dating apps
are driven by pictures
I estimate that photos drive 90% of the action in online dating
“
”
Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid
We don't really know
what we want
The kind of partner people said they were looking for didn't match up with the kind of partner they were actually interested in
“
”
Amarnath Thombre, chief of algorithms for Match.com
Women are much more selective than men
Men are nearly three times as likely to swipe "like" (in 46% of cases) than women (14%)
“
”
Jessica Carbino, Tinder's in-house dating and relationship expert
Less good-looking people have much lower chances
A man of average attractiveness can only expect to be liked by slightly less than 1% of females
(1 like for every 115 females).
“
”
Tinder Experiments II
Usual consequences
The way apps work
promotes superficiality
The liking process
can feel arbitrary
You are pushed to
come back every day
Automation
to the rescue
The like everybody strategy
Waste of time
Waste of opportunity
How to automate it
Swipe based on preferences
Automatic and unattended
A bit more selective
How the
tool works
Origins and evolution
Browser automation
script with Puppeteer
Network requests
with developer tools
Unofficial online documentation
Command-line tool
with Node.js
Internal architecture
Config
Logging
Network
UI
User input
Config
Network
UI
Logging
User input
(async function() {
title('Swipr');
try {
let config = readConfig();
if (shouldRunSetup) {
config = await runSetup(config);
}
await runMain(config);
} catch (err) {
error(`Error: ${err.message}`);
}
})();async function runMain(config) {
try {
// Do stuff
} catch (err) {
switch (err) {
case apiErrors.NO_MATCH_RECOMMENDATIONS:
throw Error('No match recommendations');
case apiErrors.OUT_OF_LIKES:
throw Error('You are out of likes');
default:
throw err;
}
}
}Config
Network
UI
Logging
User input
const title = str => {
console.info(chalk.bold.magenta('❤️'), str);
};
const success = str => {
console.info(chalk.bold.green('✔️'), str);
};
const error = str => {
console.error(chalk.bold.red('❌'), str);
};Config
Logging
Network
UI
User input
const readConfig = key => (getConfig())[key];
const writeConfig = (key, value) => {
setConfig({ ...getConfig(), [key]: value });
};
const isConfigValid = (key, value) => {
switch (key) {
case 'phoneNumber':
return Number.isInteger(value);
default:
return false;
}
};Config
Logging
UI
User input
Network
async function createApi(refreshToken) {
return Object.keys(methods).reduce((api, method) => {
api[method] = async function(...args) {
const callMethod = () => methods[method](apiToken, ...args);
try {
return callMethod();
} catch (err) {
if (err.statusCode === UNAUTHORIZED_CODE) {
await refreshApiToken(refreshToken);
return callMethod();
}
throw err;
}
};
return api;
}, {});
}async function likeUser(apiToken, userId) {
const response = await get('/like/' + userId, {
apiToken
});
if (!response.likes_remaining) {
throw errors.OUT_OF_LIKES;
}
return response;
}Third-party ecosystem
chalk
apisauce
dotenv
inquirer
conf
oclif
gluegun
ncc
pkg
Ideas for
the future
Add more liking criteria
Support other dating apps
Turn into a website or app
Some final
thoughts
We had fun and learned stuff
But did we solve the problem?
53 matches, including 38 people he began talking [...] 9 agreed to a date, 3 stood him up, and 2 cancelled, leaving him with
4 actual dates.
“
”
Kari Paul, MarketWatch
@soyguijarro
Thank you!
- Tinder Experiments I
- Tinder Experiments II
-
Tinder, the Fast-Growing Dating App, Taps an Age-Old Truth
Nick Bilton, The New York Times -
From 53 matches to 4 dates: What a month on Tinder is really like
Kari Paul, MarketWatch -
Race and Attraction, 2009–2014
The OkCupid Blog
-
THE YEAR IN SWIPE - What 2019 Taught Us About the Future of Dating
Tinder press release -
Dating trends survey
Bumble - Swipr repository
- Unofficial Tinder API documentation: I, II
- Unofficial Happn API documentation
- Tinder clients for Node: I, II
A love story written in JavaScript
By Ramón Guijarro
