@smallwins/validate

Parameter validation for builtins and custom types. Accepts params and a schema and returns an array of Errors or false.

var validate = require('@smallwins/validate')

function hi(params, callback) {
  var schema = {
    'name':       {required:true,  type:Object},
    'name.first': {required:true,  type:String},
    'name.last':  {required:false, type:String}
  }
  var errors = validate(params, schema) 
  if (errors) {
    callback(errors)
  }
  else {
    callback(null, 'hi ' + params.first)
  }
}

// logs: null, hi brian
hi({name:{first:'brian', last:'leroux'}}, console.log)

// logs: [ [ReferenceError: missing required param name.first] ] 
hi({name:{}}, console.log)

considerations

• For testing an Object that presumably came from a JSON payload
• Thusly, primarily concerned with JSON value types: Object, String, Number, Array and Boolean
• Custom types are easily supported (see ./examples)
• Designed to test keys and nested keys
• Optionally validate required
• Optionally validate min and max for String, Number and Array builtin types (and easily implement for custom types)

things it does not do

• Mutate things with: serialization, formatting or defaults
• Nested subtypes (eg. the things in an array)
• Localized error messages

further justifications

There are a tonne of libraries that do things like this but also do a whole lot more. This library deliberately limits its scope:

• Make errback style param contract validation super clean and simple
• Work primarily with builtins but easily extend
• Provide a nice API for usage (hence returning false instead of a truthy empty array for the return value of validate)

another example usage

var validate = require('@smallwins/validate')

functon sum(params, callback) {
  // define our assumed params
  var errors = validate(params, {
    x: {required:true, type:Number},
    y: {required:true, type:Number}
  })
  // err first!
  if (errors) {
    callback(errors)
  }
  else {
    callback(null, params.x + params.y)
  }
}

api

validate(params, schema)

• params a plain Object that we assume came from JSON
• schema a plain Object for describing the shape of the data
• callback (optional) Node style errback function(err, params) {}

schema keys

• required either true or false (or leave it out completely)
• type can be one of Object, String, Number, Array and Boolean
• min any Number (or anything allowed by a custom type)
• max any Number (or anything allowed by a custom type)

Check out the examples for more on custom types and ranges (and the tests).