npm package discovery and stats viewer.

Discover Tips

  • General search

    [free text search, go nuts!]

  • Package details

    pkg:[package-name]

  • User packages

    @[username]

Sponsor

Optimize Toolset

I’ve always been into building performant and accessible sites, but lately I’ve been taking it extremely seriously. So much so that I’ve been building a tool to help me optimize and monitor the sites that I build to make sure that I’m making an attempt to offer the best experience to those who visit them. If you’re into performant, accessible and SEO friendly sites, you might like it too! You can check it out at Optimize Toolset.

About

Hi, 👋, I’m Ryan Hefner  and I built this site for me, and you! The goal of this site was to provide an easy way for me to check the stats on my npm packages, both for prioritizing issues and updates, and to give me a little kick in the pants to keep up on stuff.

As I was building it, I realized that I was actually using the tool to build the tool, and figured I might as well put this out there and hopefully others will find it to be a fast and useful way to search and browse npm packages as I have.

If you’re interested in other things I’m working on, follow me on Twitter or check out the open source projects I’ve been publishing on GitHub.

I am also working on a Twitter bot for this site to tweet the most popular, newest, random packages from npm. Please follow that account now and it will start sending out packages soon–ish.

Open Software & Tools

This site wouldn’t be possible without the immense generosity and tireless efforts from the people who make contributions to the world and share their work via open source initiatives. Thank you 🙏

© 2024 – Pkg Stats / Ryan Hefner

validate-npm-package-license

v3.0.4

Published

Give me a string and I'll tell you if it's a valid npm package license string

Downloads

106,284,322

Readme

validate-npm-package-license

Give me a string and I'll tell you if it's a valid npm package license string.

var valid = require('validate-npm-package-license');

SPDX license identifiers are valid license strings:


var assert = require('assert');
var validSPDXExpression = {
  validForNewPackages: true,
  validForOldPackages: true,
  spdx: true
};

assert.deepEqual(valid('MIT'), validSPDXExpression);
assert.deepEqual(valid('BSD-2-Clause'), validSPDXExpression);
assert.deepEqual(valid('Apache-2.0'), validSPDXExpression);
assert.deepEqual(valid('ISC'), validSPDXExpression);

The function will return a warning and suggestion for nearly-correct license identifiers:

assert.deepEqual(
  valid('Apache 2.0'),
  {
    validForOldPackages: false,
    validForNewPackages: false,
    warnings: [
      'license should be ' +
      'a valid SPDX license expression (without "LicenseRef"), ' +
      '"UNLICENSED", or ' +
      '"SEE LICENSE IN <filename>"',
      'license is similar to the valid expression "Apache-2.0"'
    ]
  }
);

SPDX expressions are valid, too ...

// Simple SPDX license expression for dual licensing
assert.deepEqual(
  valid('(GPL-3.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause)'),
  validSPDXExpression
);

... except if they contain LicenseRef:

var warningAboutLicenseRef = {
  validForOldPackages: false,
  validForNewPackages: false,
  spdx: true,
  warnings: [
    'license should be ' +
    'a valid SPDX license expression (without "LicenseRef"), ' +
    '"UNLICENSED", or ' +
    '"SEE LICENSE IN <filename>"',
  ]
};

assert.deepEqual(
  valid('LicenseRef-Made-Up'),
  warningAboutLicenseRef
);

assert.deepEqual(
  valid('(MIT OR LicenseRef-Made-Up)'),
  warningAboutLicenseRef
);

If you can't describe your licensing terms with standardized SPDX identifiers, put the terms in a file in the package and point users there:

assert.deepEqual(
  valid('SEE LICENSE IN LICENSE.txt'),
  {
    validForNewPackages: true,
    validForOldPackages: true,
    inFile: 'LICENSE.txt'
  }
);

assert.deepEqual(
  valid('SEE LICENSE IN license.md'),
  {
    validForNewPackages: true,
    validForOldPackages: true,
    inFile: 'license.md'
  }
);

If there aren't any licensing terms, use UNLICENSED:

var unlicensed = {
  validForNewPackages: true,
  validForOldPackages: true,
  unlicensed: true
};
assert.deepEqual(valid('UNLICENSED'), unlicensed);
assert.deepEqual(valid('UNLICENCED'), unlicensed);