How to validate a JSON file with JSON Schema

These days, I'm regularly checking big JSON files and I was tired to have to check every field manually. So I've searched on internet if we can have a JSON file structure validation.

And I found json-schema.org!

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What is it?

JSON Schema is a specification to validate the structure of the JSON file with a schema.

Schema example

{
    "type" : "object",
    "properties" : 
       "price" : {"type" : "number"},
       "name" : {"type" : "string"}
    }
}

As you can see, a schema is a JSON file where you will define all your fields with their type. Then, you can use it with an implementation of a validator and check all your related files!

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Validators

In the website, you can see a huge list of validators for a lot of languages/contexts.

The one that I like is a python one :

python-jsonschema / jsonschema

An implementation of the JSON Schema specification for Python

jsonschema

jsonschema is an implementation of the JSON Schema specification for Python.

>>> from jsonschema import validate

>>> # A sample schema, like what we'd get from json.load()
>>> schema = {
...     "type" : "object",
...     "properties" : {
...         "price" : {"type" : "number"},
...         "name" : {"type" : "string"},
...     },
... }

>>> # If no exception is raised by validate(), the instance is valid.
>>> validate(instance={"name" : "Eggs", "price" : 34.99}, schema=schema)

>>> validate(
...     instance={"name" : "Eggs", "price" : "Invalid"}, schema=schema,
... )                                   # doctest: +IGNORE_EXCEPTION_DETAIL
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
ValidationError: 'Invalid' is not of type 'number'

It can also be used from the command line by installing check-jsonschema…

View on GitHub

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Also, if you look a little bit further, you will see other tools to help you to create a schema.

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Finally, I hope it will help you as much as it helps me.