JSON Schema Validator

• When to use this library?
• Maven installation
  • Java7 version
• Quickstart
• Draft 4 or Draft 6?
• Investigating failures
  • JSON report of the failures
• Eary failure mode
• Default values
• Format validators
  • Example
• Resolution scopes

Supported by JetBrains.

This project is an implementation of the JSON Schema Draft v4 and Draft v6 specifications. It uses the org.json API (created by Douglas Crockford) for representing JSON data.

When to use this library?

Lets assume that you already know what JSON Schema is, and you want to utilize it in a Java application to validate JSON data. But - as you may have already discovered - there is also an other Java implementation of the JSON Schema specification. So here are some advices about which one to use:

• if you use Jackson to handle JSON in Java code, then java-json-tools/json-schema-validator is obviously a better choice, since it uses Jackson
• if you want to use the org.json API then this library is the better choice
• if you need JSON Schema Draft 6 support, then you need this library.
• if you want to use anything else for handling JSON (like GSON or javax.json), then you are in a little trouble, since currently there is no schema validation library backed by these libraries. It means that you will have to parse the JSON twice: once for the schema validator, and once for your own processing. In a case like that, this library is probably still a better choice, since it seems to be twice faster than the Jackson-based java-json-tools library.

Maven installation

Add the JitPack repository and the dependency to your pom.xml as follows:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.everit-org.json-schema</groupId>
    <artifactId>org.everit.json.schema</artifactId>
    <version>1.7.0</version>
</dependency>
...
<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>jitpack.io</id>
        <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Note: from version 1.6.0, the library is primarily distributed through JitPack. Previous versions are also available through maven central.

Java7 version

If you are looking for a version which works on Java7, then you can use this artifact, kindly backported by Doctusoft:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.doctusoft</groupId>
    <artifactId>json-schema-java7</artifactId>
    <version>1.4.1</version>
</dependency>

Quickstart

import org.everit.json.schema.Schema;
import org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader;
import org.json.JSONObject;
import org.json.JSONTokener;
// ...
try (InputStream inputStream = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/path/to/your/schema.json")) {
  JSONObject rawSchema = new JSONObject(new JSONTokener(inputStream));
  Schema schema = SchemaLoader.load(rawSchema);
  schema.validate(new JSONObject("{\"hello\" : \"world\"}")); // throws a ValidationException if this object is invalid
}

Draft 4 or draft 6?

JSON Schema has currently 3 major releases, Draft 3, Draft 4 and Draft 6. This library implements the 2 newer ones, you can have a quick look at the differences here. Since the two versions have a number of differences - and draft 6 is not backwards-compatible with draft 4 - it is good to know which version will you use.

The best way to denote the JSON Schema version you want to use is to include its meta-schema URL in the document root with the "$schema" key. This is a common notation, facilitated by the library to determine which version should be used.

Quick reference:

• if there is "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema" in the schema root, then Draft 4 will be used
• if there is "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-06/schema" in the schema root, then Draft 6 will be used
• if none of these is found then Draft 4 will be assumed as default

If you want to specify the meta-schema version explicitly then you can change the default from Draft 4 to Draft 6 by configuring the loader this way:

SchemaLoader loader = SchemaLoader.builder()
                .schemaJson(yourSchemaJSON)
                .draftV6Support()
                .build();
Schema schema = loader.load().build();

Investigating failures

Starting from version 1.1.0 the validator collects every schema violations (instead of failing immediately on the first one). Each failure is denoted by a JSON pointer, pointing from the root of the document to the violating part. If more than one schema violations have been detected, then a ValidationException will be thrown at the most common parent elements of the violations, and each separate violations can be obtained using the ValidationException#getCausingExceptions() method.

To demonstrate the above concepts, lets see an example. Lets consider the following schema:

{
	"type" : "object",
	"properties" : {
		"rectangle" : {"$ref" : "#/definitions/Rectangle" }
	},
	"definitions" : {
		"size" : {
			"type" : "number",
			"minimum" : 0
		},
		"Rectangle" : {
			"type" : "object",
			"properties" : {
				"a" : {"$ref" : "#/definitions/size"},
				"b" : {"$ref" : "#/definitions/size"}
			}
		}
	}
}

The following JSON document has only one violation against the schema (since "a" cannot be negative):

{
	"rectangle" : {
		"a" : -5,
		"b" : 5
	}
}

In this case the thrown ValidationException will point to #/rectangle/a and it won't contain sub-exceptions:

try {
  schema.validate(rectangleSingleFailure);
} catch (ValidationException e) {
  // prints #/rectangle/a: -5.0 is not higher or equal to 0
  System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}

Now - to illustrate the way how multiple violations are handled - lets consider the following JSON document, where both the "a" and "b" properties violate the above schema:

{
	"rectangle" : {
		"a" : -5,
		"b" : "asd"
	}
}

In this case the thrown ValidationException will point to #/rectangle, and it has 2 sub-exceptions, pointing to #/rectangle/a and #/rectangle/b :

try {
  schema.validate(rectangleMultipleFailures);
} catch (ValidationException e) {
  System.out.println(e.getMessage());
  e.getCausingExceptions().stream()
      .map(ValidationException::getMessage)
      .forEach(System.out::println);
}

This will print the following output:

#/rectangle: 2 schema violations found
#/rectangle/a: -5.0 is not higher or equal to 0
#/rectangle/b: expected type: Number, found: String

JSON report of the failures

Since version 1.4.0 it is possible to print the ValidationException instances as JSON-formatted failure reports. The ValidationException#toJSON() method returns a JSONObject instance with the following keys:

• "message": the programmer-friendly exception message (desription of the validation failure)
• "keyword": the JSON Schema keyword which was violated
• "pointerToViolation": a JSON Pointer denoting the path from the input document root to its fragment which caused the validation failure
• "schemaLocation": a JSON Pointer denoting the path from the schema JSON root to the violated keyword
• "causingExceptions": a (possibly empty) array of sub-exceptions. Each sub-exception is represented as a JSON object, with the same structure as described in this listing. See more above about causing exceptions.

Please take into account that the complete failure report is a hierarchical tree structure: sub-causes of a cause can be obtained using #getCausingExceptions() .

Early failure mode

By default the validation error reporting in collecting mode (see the "Investigating failures" chapter). That is convenient for having a detailed error report, but under some circumstances it is more appropriate to stop the validation when a failure is found without checking the rest of the JSON document. To toggle this fast-failing validation mode

• you have to explicitly build a Validator instance for your schema instead of calling Schema#validate(input)
• you have to call the failEarly() method of ValidatorBuilder

Example:

import org.everit.json.schema.Validator;
...
Validator validator = Validator.builder()
	.failEarly()
	.build();
validator.performValidation(schema, input);

Note: the Validator class is immutable and thread-safe, so you don't have to create a new one for each validation, it is enough to configure it only once.

Default values

The JSON Schema specification defines the "default" keyword for denoting default values, though it doesn't explicitly state how it should affect the validation process. By default this library doesn't set the default values, but if you need this feature, you can turn it on by the SchemaLoaderBuilder#useDefaults(boolean) method, before loading the schema:

{
  "properties": {
    "prop": {
      "type": "number",
      "default": 1
    }
  }
}

JSONObject input = new JSONObject("{}");
System.out.println(input.get("prop")); // prints null
Schema schema = SchemaLoader.builder()
	.useDefaults(true)
	.schemaJson(rawSchema)
	.build()
	.load().build();
schema.validate(input);
System.out.println(input.get("prop")); // prints 1

If there are some properties missing from input which have "default" values in the schema, then they will be set by the validator during validation.

Format validators

Starting from version 1.2.0 the library supports the "format" keyword (which is an optional part of the specification), so you can use the following formats in the schemas:

• date-time
• email
• hostname
• ipv4
• ipv6
• uri

If you use the library in Draft 6 mode, then the followings are also supported:

• uri-reference
• uri-template
• json-pointer

The library also supports adding custom format validators. To use a custom validator basically you have to

• create your own validation in a class implementing the org.everit.json.schema.FormatValidator interface
• bind your validator to a name in a org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.SchemaLoaderBuilder instance before loading the actual schema

Example

Lets assume the task is to create a custom validator which accepts strings with an even number of characters.

The custom FormatValidator will look something like this:

public class EvenCharNumValidator implements FormatValidator {

  @Override
  public Optional<String> validate(final String subject) {
    if (subject.length() % 2 == 0) {
      return Optional.empty();
    } else {
      return Optional.of(String.format("the length of string [%s] is odd", subject));
    }
  }

}

To bind the EvenCharNumValidator to a "format" value (for example "evenlength") you have to bind a validator instance to the keyword in the schema loader configuration:

JSONObject rawSchema = new JSONObject(new JSONTokener(inputStream));
SchemaLoader schemaLoader = SchemaLoader.builder()
	.schemaJson(rawSchema) // rawSchema is the JSON representation of the schema utilizing the "evenlength" non-standard format
	.addFormatValidator("evenlength", new EvenCharNumValidator()) // the EvenCharNumValidator gets bound to the "evenlength" keyword
	.build();
Schema schema = schemaLoader.load().build(); // the schema is created using the above created configuration
schema.validate(jsonDcoument);  // the document validation happens here

Resolution scopes

In a JSON Schema document it is possible to use relative URIs to refer previously defined types. Such references are expressed using the "$ref" and "id" keywords. While the specification describes resolution scope alteration and dereferencing in detail, it doesn't explain the expected behavior when the first occuring "$ref" or "id" is a relative URI.

In the case of this implementation it is possible to explicitly define an absolute URI serving as the base URI (resolution scope) using the appropriate builder method:

SchemaLoader schemaLoader = SchemaLoader.builder()
        .schemaJson(jsonSchema)
        .resolutionScope("http://example.org/") // setting the default resolution scope
        .build();