Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

cffr (development version)

• Internal code and documentation were reviewed and refactored with AI assistance to improve maintainability, consistency and user-facing messages.
• Tests were improved with AI assistance to reduce dependence on external services and make internal fixtures more robust.

cffr 1.4.0

CRAN release: 2026-05-04

• DOIs in inst/CITATION url fields are detected, including those matching the pattern .*dx.doi.org/.
• The website field in definitions.person and definitions.entity uses ROR as a fallback.
• cff_read() correctly handles a single languages value (#105).
• cff_validate() now uses the ajv validation engine via jsonvalidate::json_validate(), which returns more informative error messages.

cffr 1.3.0

CRAN release: 2026-03-13

• The minimum required R version is now 4.1.0.
• Vignettes were migrated to Quarto.

cffr 1.2.1

CRAN release: 2026-01-12

• as_cff_person() improves comment detection and parsing across its function family.
• cff_gha_update() now runs in ubuntu-latest by default to save GitHub Actions quota (#90, thanks to @Pakillo).
• The mapping of CRAN packages to SPDX codes was updated.

cffr 1.2.0

CRAN release: 2025-01-25

• cff_write() gains a new r_citation argument. When it is set to TRUE, an R citation file (inst/CITATION) is generated or updated with the information from the generated CITATION.cff file. No backup copy is created. For more control, use cff_write_citation() (#79).
• repository-code now also recognizes Codeberg as a valid repository (#88).
• repository-code recognizes repositories regardless of casing. Lowercase is still recommended as a good practice for R developers.

cffr 1.1.1

CRAN release: 2024-08-16

• ORCID extraction was adapted for R > 4.4.1.

cffr 1.1.0

CRAN release: 2024-07-23

• cffr now automatically adds DOIs to packages on CRAN (e.g. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.cffr):
  • If the package has a CITATION file providing a DOI, the CITATION DOI is used as the main CITATION.cff doi and the CRAN DOI is added as an identifier.
  • Otherwise, the CRAN DOI is used as doi.
  • When extracting dependencies (e.g. cff_create(dependencies = TRUE)) and the package dependency is on CRAN, the CRAN DOI is used for the dependency in the references key.
• commit is extracted from RemoteSha.
• The cran_to_spdx dataset was updated.

cffr 1.0.1

CRAN release: 2024-04-09

• cff_write() gains a new encoding argument to make it work with different encodings. See iconv().
• Fixed NOTEs caused by empty lines in docs.

cffr 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2024-03-12

This is a major release with some notable changes. The main change affects non-core functions. The natural workflow (cff_create() → cff_write() → cff_validate()) should not be affected.

Major changes

Classes and methods

cffr now implements a new class system for definitions.reference, definitions.person and definitions.entity objects:

• A list of definitions.reference objects (e.g. references) has class cff_ref_lst, cff and individual elements (e.g. preferred-citation or each member of references) have class cff_ref, cff.
• A list of definitions.person or definitions.entity objects (e.g. authors, contact) has class cff_pers_lst, cff and individual elements (e.g. publisher or each member of authors) have class cff_pers, cff.

This change allows writing specific S3 methods and extends the capabilities of the package.

• as_cff() is a new S3 generic method that replaces as.cff() and coerces R objects to cff class format. Current methods provided are:
  • as_cff.Bibtex().
  • as_cff.bibentry(), replacing cff_parse_citation().
  • as_cff.person(), similar to as_cff_person() but only for person objects. We recommend using as_cff_person() since it can also coerce strings representing authors in BibTeX markup ("{von Neumen}, James"), which cannot be captured properly via methods.
• as_bibentry() is a new method for a variety of classes (character, list, NULL and classes defined by cffr).
• as_cff_person() is a new method.
• The following base and utils methods now support the cff class:
  • as.data.frame.cff().
  • as.person(), although only for definitions.person or definitions.entity (e.g. authors, contacts, editors, publisher, etc.).
  • head.cff(), tail.cff().
  • toBibtex.cff().

API

The API has been completely revised to provide more clarity on function naming and to facilitate internal maintenance. This change only affects non-core functions. Each function now does fewer things but does them better. The old API has been deprecated and now warns when used, providing advice on the replacement function.

Deprecation

• cff_to_bibtex() and cff_extract_to_bibtex(): replaced by the as_bibentry() S3 generic.
• cff_parse_person() and cff_parse_person_bibtex(): replaced by the as_cff_person() S3 generic.
• cff_parse_citation(): replaced by the as_cff() S3 generic.
• cff_from_bibtex(): replaced by cff_read_bib() (for *.bib files) and cff_read_bib_text() (for character strings).
• write_bib() and write_citation(): replaced by cff_write_bib() and cff_write_citation(), respectively.
• Argument path in cff() is also deprecated, use cff_read() instead.

New capabilities

• cff_read() now handles reading from external files exclusively. It is designed to fit all supported file types in a single entry point, along with new specific readers used under the hood by cff_read():
  • cff_read_cff_citation().
  • cff_read_description().
  • cff_read_citation().
  • cff_read_bib().
• cff_modify() is a new function for updating and modifying cff objects easily.

Other changes

• The minimum required R version is now 4.0.0.
• The BibTeX crosswalk was updated (see vignette("bibtex-cff", package = "cffr")), with corresponding changes in the mapping performed by as_bibtex() and cff_parse_citation():
  • @inbook and @book gain a new value in CFF when series is provided: collection-type: book-series.
  • cffr can now handle BibLaTeX @inbook, which differs significantly from BibTeX @inbook.

cffr 0.5.0

CRAN release: 2023-05-05

Lifecycle

• cff_to_bibtex() and cff_extract_to_bibtex() have been merged. cff_extract_to_bibtex() is now soft-deprecated.

New features

• write_citation() is a new function that can generate an inst/CITATION file from a cff object (#51).

Enhancements

• Additional authors of an R package can now be included based on roles in the DESCRIPTION file, via the authors_roles argument (#49).

• The message interface now uses cli.

• The invisible result of cff_validate() now includes the summary of errors (if any) as an attributes() named "error", as jsonvalidate::json_validate() does when verbose = TRUE:

  Be verbose? If TRUE, then an attribute "errors" will list validation failures as a data frame.

• Improved extraction of date-released.

cffr 0.4.1

CRAN release: 2023-01-30

• Replaced the crayon dependency with cli (#46).
• cff_validate() performance was improved.

cffr 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2022-11-17

• Fixed typo (#40, thanks to @dpprdan).
• Added cff_from_bibtex().
• Dependency URLs now behave consistently when RSPM is the default repository (for example, on GitHub Actions or RStudio Cloud).

cffr 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2022-09-23

• preferred-citation is only produced when a CITATION R file has been provided with the package (#37).
• Improved email handling for authors.
• Added cff_read(). This functionality was already implemented in cff(), but the new function provides clarity.

cffr 0.2.3

CRAN release: 2022-08-15

• Fixed the HTML5 issue as requested by CRAN.

cffr 0.2.2

CRAN release: 2022-04-08

• cffr now uses a local copy of schema.json for validation (#33).

cffr 0.2.1

CRAN release: 2022-01-16

• The GitHub Action now runs only on the master or main branch.
• References are handled better.

cffr 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2022-01-04

• cffr now also extracts information about package dependencies and adds the main citation of the dependencies to the references field, using citation(auto = TRUE).
  • Added the dependencies argument to cff_create() and cff_write().
• Other improvements to cff_parse_citation() include:
  • cff_parse_citation() extracts more information about authors, based on the fields provided in the DESCRIPTION file.
  • cff_parse_citation() does a better job extracting information from bibentry()/BibTeX and mapping it to preferred-citation/references fields of CFF.
• Added new functions for working with git pre-commit hooks :
  • cff_git_hook_install().
  • cff_git_hook_remove().
• Added new BibTeX functions:
  • cff_extract_to_bibtex().
  • cff_to_bibtex().
  • cff_parse_person_bibtex().
  • write_bib().
• Added a new dependency: lifecycle.

cffr 0.1.1

CRAN release: 2021-11-11

• Accepted by JOSS.
• Added pages to cff_parse_citation().
• Added the gh_keywords argument to cff_create()/cff_write(). If TRUE, it includes GitHub repository topics as keywords.

cffr 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2021-11-04

• First CRAN release.

cffr 0.0.2

• cffr is now part of rOpenSci.
• Updated documentation and README.
• Added fuzzy matching for the keys argument.
• Added the cran_to_spdx dataset.
• Added the DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5509766.
• Installed package citations are extracted using citation().
• The preferred-citation key is automatically generated from DESCRIPTION.
• Renamed cff_schema_definitions_reference() to cff_schema_definitions_refs().
• repository key is supported.
• Added the vignette("r-cff", package = "cffr") vignette.
• Added support for Bioconductor packages.
• Added cff_gha_update().

cffr 0.0.1

• First stable release.