require-attribution

💼 This rule is enabled in the following configs: ✔️ legacy-recommended, ✅ recommended, 📦 recommended-publishable.

💡 This rule is manually fixable by editor suggestions.

This ensures that proper attribution is included in a package, requiring that either author or contributors is defined, and that if contributors is present, it should include at least one contributor.

Rule Details

When publishing a package, it’s helpful to include some amount of attribution. The npm supports two ways of defining attribution in a package.json:

• author: this is either a string with name, email, and url combined, or an object with name, email, and url. This is generally the original creator of the package, or sole maintainer in smaller projects.
• contributors: a list of all collaborators contributing to the project. Each item in the array has the same name, email, and url properties as author has.

Examples with Default Options (preferContributorsOnly: false)

Examples of incorrect code for this rule with default options:

{
  "name": "nin"
}

{
  "author": "Trent Reznor <treznor@nin.com> (https://nin.com)",
  "contributors": []
}

Examples of correct code for this rule with default options:

{
  "author": "Trent Reznor <treznor@nin.com> (https://nin.com)"
}

{
  "author": {
    "name": "Trent Reznor",
    "email": "treznor@nin.com",
    "url": "https://nin.com"
  }
}

{
  "contributors": [
    {
      "name": "Trent Reznor",
      "email": "treznor@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    },
    {
      "name": "Atticus Ross",
      "email": "atticus@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "author": {
    "name": "Trent Reznor",
    "email": "treznor@nin.com",
    "url": "https://nin.com"
  },
  "contributors": [
    {
      "name": "Trent Reznor",
      "email": "treznor@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    },
    {
      "name": "Atticus Ross",
      "email": "atticus@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    }
  ]
}

Examples with preferContributorsOnly: true

Examples of incorrect code for this rule with default options:

{
  "name": "nin"
}

{
  "author": "Trent Reznor <treznor@nin.com> (https://nin.com)",
  "contributors": []
}

{
  "author": "Trent Reznor <treznor@nin.com> (https://nin.com)"
}

{
  "author": {
    "name": "Trent Reznor",
    "email": "treznor@nin.com",
    "url": "https://nin.com"
  }
}

{
  "author": {
    "name": "Trent Reznor",
    "email": "treznor@nin.com",
    "url": "https://nin.com"
  },
  "contributors": [
    {
      "name": "Trent Reznor",
      "email": "treznor@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    },
    {
      "name": "Atticus Ross",
      "email": "atticus@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    }
  ]
}

Examples of correct code for this rule with default options:

{
  "contributors": [
    {
      "name": "Trent Reznor",
      "email": "treznor@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    },
    {
      "name": "Atticus Ross",
      "email": "atticus@nin.com",
      "url": "https://nin.com"
    }
  ]
}

Options

Name	Description	Type	Default
ignorePrivate	Skip attribution requirements for packages with "private": true.	Boolean	true
preferContributorsOnly	Require that only contributors is present, and author is not defined.	Boolean	false

ignorePrivate

When enabled, ignorePrivate skips all attribution checks for packages that have "private": true set. This is useful for internal packages that won’t be published to npm.

{
  "package-json/require-attribution": [
    "error",
    {
      "ignorePrivate": true
    }
  ]
}

preferContributorsOnly

When enabled, preferContributorsOnly requires that only contributors may be defined for attribution, and will report if author is also present.

{
  "package-json/require-attribution": [
    "error",
    {
      "preferContributorsOnly": true
    }
  ]
}

When Not to Use It

If your package is not going to be published, and attribution is not important, then this rule can safely be disabled.