Validating a yaml document in python

Question

One of the benefits of XML is being able to validate a document against an XSD. YAML doesn\'t have this feature, so how can I validate that the YAML document I open is in th

Answer 1

Given that JSON and YAML are pretty similar beasts, you could make use of JSON-Schema to validate a sizable subset of YAML. Here's a code snippet (you'll need PyYAML and jsonschema installed):

from jsonschema import validate
import yaml

schema = """
type: object
properties:
  testing:
    type: array
    items:
      enum:
        - this
        - is
        - a
        - test
"""

good_instance = """
testing: ['this', 'is', 'a', 'test']
"""

validate(yaml.load(good_instance), yaml.load(schema)) # passes

# Now let's try a bad instance...

bad_instance = """
testing: ['this', 'is', 'a', 'bad', 'test']
"""

validate(yaml.load(bad_instance), yaml.load(schema))

# Fails with:
# ValidationError: 'bad' is not one of ['this', 'is', 'a', 'test']
#
# Failed validating 'enum' in schema['properties']['testing']['items']:
#     {'enum': ['this', 'is', 'a', 'test']}
#
# On instance['testing'][3]:
#     'bad'

One problem with this is that if your schema spans multiple files and you use "$ref" to reference the other files then those other files will need to be JSON, I think. But there are probably ways around that. In my own project, I'm playing with specifying the schema using JSON files whilst the instances are YAML.