required-element Rule Changes

This page covers a default value change in the required-element rule. If you use this rule to check for required child elements, read on.

Summary

Change	Who is affected
ignoreOmittedElements default: false → true	Configs relying on ghost elements to satisfy requirements

What changed

HTML allows certain tags to be omitted. For example, <tbody> is optional inside <table>. When omitted, the HTML parser still creates a "ghost" node for it internally.

Breaking Change

In v5, ghost elements are ignored by default. Only elements explicitly written in the source code satisfy the required-element check.

Before (v4)

The ghost <tbody> satisfied the requirement. No violation was reported:

<!-- No violation in v4 -->
<table>
  <tr>
    <td>Text</td>
  </tr>
</table>

{
  "nodeRules": [
    {
      "selector": "table",
      "rules": {
        "required-element": ["tbody"]
      }
    }
  ]
}

After (v5)

The same config now reports a violation because the ghost <tbody> is ignored.

How to fix

You have two options.

Option 1: Write the element explicitly (recommended):

<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>Text</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Option 2: Restore the v4 behavior by setting ignoreOmittedElements to false:

{
  "nodeRules": [
    {
      "selector": "table",
      "rules": {
        "required-element": {
          "value": ["tbody"],
          "options": {
            "ignoreOmittedElements": false
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

tip

Writing elements explicitly makes your HTML clearer and avoids relying on parser-generated ghost nodes. Option 1 is recommended.