VOEBBot is a browser extension that removes the paywall on German online news sites using your VÖBB library account.

VOEBBot

Official website

Development

This uses rollup to build the extension files. Install and run like this:

npm install

# Run this during development
npm start

Extension overview

The extension has four different entry points:

• The content script in src/content.js runs on the news article page, communicates with background script
• the background script in src/background.js which opens new tabs, navigates them around and scrapes the content
• the options page in src/options.js is the options page for the extension
• the popup in popup/ is opened when the extension icon in the toolbar is clicked

These are the data pieces inside:

• src/providers.js contains entities that you authenticate against and that grant access
• src/sources.js contains databases that you can get access to through providers
• src/sites.js contains news sites, how to extract their meta data and which source could provide access

Additionally user data like credentials and chosen provider is stored via browser.storage.sync.

Release

1. Update version number in package.json and manifest.json and commit.
2. git tag vX.Y.Z
3. git push --tags origin main
4. GitHub release Action will build, create release, sign Firefox extension, submit to Chrome Web Store and update website.