README.md

📜 Dead simple license scraper with zero dependencies

Introduction

npm-license-scraper will scan your package.json and node_modules to generate a JSON or TypeScript file including the licenses of all open source packages that are being used.

Usage

$ npm i -D @inthepocket/npm-license-scraper

# Via npx
$ npx npm-license-scraper

# Directly
$ node node_modules/.bin/npm-license-scraper

Options

• --export [filename]: Export to a file. Use a .ts extension to generate a typed TypeScript file with as const. (default ./licenses.json)
• --includeDev: Include dev dependencies in output (default false)
• --exclude [package|package,package,package]: Ignore certain packages from the check (e.g submodules, monorepo or private packages)

JSON output (default)

By default, the tool exports a JSON array with the following shape:

[
  {
    "package": "react",
    "version": "18.0.0",
    "license": "MIT",
    "url": "https://reactjs.org/",
    "isValid": true
  },
  {
    "package": "react-native",
    "version": "0.69.3",
    "license": "MIT",
    "url": "https://npmjs.com/package/react-native",
    "isValid": true
  }
]

TypeScript output

When exporting with a .ts extension (--export=licenses.ts), the output is a fully typed TypeScript module using as const:

// Auto-generated by npm-license-scraper
export const licenses = [
  {
    package: "react",
    version: "18.0.0",
    license: "MIT",
    url: "https://reactjs.org/",
    isValid: true,
  },
] as const;

export type License = (typeof licenses)[number];

This gives you full autocomplete and type inference when consuming the generated file — all values are literal types rather than widened to string or boolean.