@bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper

Tool to help generate legal & copyright notices about project dependencies.

Intended usage is to provide data in an organized way for a front-end to then display.

Legal Disclaimer

This tool should not be used blindly or without further human activity to process its output.

Don't come blaming us for your poor business decisions.

Installation

This package can be used as a dependency, with its functions imported into your dev or production or other code. Or, this package can be used as a command line tool.

To install in your production dependencies, run this:

npm install @bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper

To install in your production dependencies, run this:

npm install --save-dev @bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper

To run as a command line tool without installing it into a project, run this:

npx @bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper

Basic Usage

Default usage of this package will meet most peoples' needs.

Default usage will search for the package.json file in the current working directory and create license data based on that file.

Command Line Usage

If using this package as a command line tool, you can pass in customisation options with these flags:

  -p, --packageJsonPath <packageJsonPath>            A path to a package.json. If not provided, the package.json in the current working directory will be used. (default: Result of `path.join(process.cwd(), "package.json")` )
  -lo, --licenseOverrides <licensesToOverride>       The licenses you want to allow in your project. (default: [])
  -ex, --excludedLicenses <excludedSpdxIdentifiers>  The licenses you want to forbid in your project. (default: [])
  -h, --help                                         display help for command

Please note that the license overrides and license exclusions are not yet implemented as of 4th May 2024.

Typical usage of this command may look like:

npx @bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper > ./out/organizedLicenseData.json

You could even create a bit of robust NPM/bash scripting like so, to guarantee that the out folder exists:

mkdir -p ./out && npx @bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper > ./out/organizedLicenseData.json

Imported Package Usage

If you wish to use this package within your own JavaScript code, you can import the package like so:

const {organiseProjectLicenseInfo} = require("@bigfootds/npm-compliance-helper");

You can provide that function with a custom path to a package.json file, or just give it nothing and it will find the package.json file in the current working directory.

Like so:

async function someFunction(){
	let output = "";
	
	output = await organiseProjectLicenseInfo().catch(error => error);

	console.log(Object.keys(output));

	console.log(output.directDependencies);

	return output;
}