names that are "too similar" should not display as available

[chase-moskal]

npm has a mechanism to prevent publishing with names similar to existing packages.

for example, snapstate is shown as available in this app,

however, the name is too similar to snap-state, and thus cannot be published.

[remarkablemark]

You're right @chase-moskal. However, there's no easy way to determine that via the public API. This may be something that may be too complex to handle for this simple website.

[chase-moskal]

@remarkablemark, ah, that's too bad npm doesn't provide a proper api for this case.

perhaps there's a workaround -- maybe this site could query http://registry.npmjs.com/-/v1/search?text=<searchstring>&size=20 to pull up a list that includes the similar names, and then remove all hypens from the names, to check if there is a name that matches

const packageName = "snapstate"
const similarNames = await querySimilarPackageNames(packageName)
const similarNamesWithoutHyphens = similarNames.map(name => name.replace("-", ""))
const packageNameWithoutHyphens = packageName.replace("-", "")

const isTooSimilar = similarNamesWithoutHyphens.includes(packageNameWithoutHyphens)

just a thought

[remarkablemark]

Thanks for sharing your approach. I'll see if I have time to implement it.