Go Validation

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NOTE: This is a fork of the well known ozzo-validation package which as of Feb 2023 doesn't appear to be under active maintenance for more than 2 years. At Invopop we use this library extensively, so it only felt appropriate to be more pro-active. We'll do out best to respond to issues and review or merge any pull requests.

Description

validation is a Go package that provides configurable and extensible data validation capabilities.

It has the following features:

use normal programming constructs rather than error-prone struct tags to specify how data should be validated.
can validate data of different types, e.g., structs, strings, byte slices, slices, maps, arrays.
can validate custom data types as long as they implement the Validatable interface.
can validate data types that implement the sql.Valuer interface (e.g. sql.NullString).
customizable and well-formatted validation errors.
error code and message translation support.
provide a rich set of validation rules right out of box.
extremely easy to create and use custom validation rules.

For an example on how this library is used in an application, please refer to go-rest-api which is a starter kit for building RESTful APIs in Go.

For further examples, checkout the GOBL project which uses validation extensively.

Requirements

Latest supported Go (1.20) or later.

Getting Started

The validation package mainly includes a set of validation rules and two validation methods. You use validation rules to describe how a value should be considered valid, and you call either validation.Validate() or validation.ValidateStruct() to validate the value.

Installation

Run the following command to install the package:

go get github.com/invopop/validation

Validating a Simple Value

For a simple value, such as a string or an integer, you may use validation.Validate() to validate it. For example,

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/invopop/validation"
	"github.com/invopop/validation/is"
)

func main() {
	data := "example"
	err := validation.Validate(data,
		validation.Required,       // not empty
		validation.Length(5, 100), // length between 5 and 100
		is.URL,                    // is a valid URL
	)
	fmt.Println(err)
	// Output:
	// must be a valid URL
}

The method validation.Validate() will run through the rules in the order that they are listed. If a rule fails the validation, the method will return the corresponding error and skip the rest of the rules. The method will return nil if the value passes all validation rules.

Validating a Struct

For a struct value, you usually want to check if its fields are valid. For example, in a RESTful application, you may unmarshal the request payload into a struct and then validate the struct fields. If one or multiple fields are invalid, you may want to get an error describing which fields are invalid. You can use validation.ValidateStruct() to achieve this purpose. A single struct can have rules for multiple fields, and a field can be associated with multiple rules. For example,

type Address struct {
	Street string
	City   string
	State  string
	Zip    string
}

func (a Address) Validate() error {
	return validation.ValidateStruct(&a,
		// Street cannot be empty, and the length must between 2 and 50
		validation.Field(&a.Street, validation.Required, validation.Length(2, 50)),
		// City cannot be empty, and the length must between 2 and 50
		validation.Field(&a.City, validation.Required, validation.Length(2, 50)),
		// State cannot be empty, and must be a string consisting of two letters in upper case
		validation.Field(&a.State, validation.Required, validation.Match(regexp.MustCompile("^[A-Z]{2}$"))),
		// State cannot be empty, and must be a string consisting of five digits
		validation.Field(&a.Zip, validation.Required, validation.Match(regexp.MustCompile("^[0-9]{5}$"))),
	)
}

a := Address{
    Street: "123",
    City:   "Unknown",
    State:  "Virginia",
    Zip:    "12345",
}

err := a.Validate()
fmt.Println(err)
// Output:
// Street: the length must be between 5 and 50; State: must be in a valid format.

Note that when calling validation.ValidateStruct to validate a struct, you should pass to the method a pointer to the struct instead of the struct itself. Similarly, when calling validation.Field to specify the rules for a struct field, you should use a pointer to the struct field.

When the struct validation is performed, the fields are validated in the order they are specified in ValidateStruct. And when each field is validated, its rules are also evaluated in the order they are associated with the field. If a rule fails, an error is recorded for that field, and the validation will continue with the next field.

Validating a Map

Sometimes you might need to work with dynamic data stored in maps rather than a typed model. You can use validation.Map() in this situation. A single map can have rules for multiple keys, and a key can be associated with multiple rules. For example,

c := map[string]interface{}{
	"Name":  "Qiang Xue",
	"Email": "q",
	"Address": map[string]interface{}{
		"Street": "123",
		"City":   "Unknown",
		"State":  "Virginia",
		"Zip":    "12345",
	},
}

err := validation.Validate(c,
	validation.Map(
		// Name cannot be empty, and the length must be between 5 and 20.
		validation.Key("Name", validation.Required, validation.Length(5, 20)),
		// Email cannot be empty and should be in a valid email format.
		validation.Key("Email", validation.Required, is.Email),
		// Validate Address using its own validation rules
		validation.Key("Address", validation.Map(
			// Street cannot be empty, and the length must between 2 and 50
			validation.Key("Street", validation.Required, validation.Length(2, 50)),
			// City cannot be empty, and the length must between 2 and 50
			validation.Key("City", validation.Required, validation.Length(2, 50)),
			// State cannot be empty, and must be a string consisting of two letters in upper case
			validation.Key("State", validation.Required, validation.Match(regexp.MustCompile("^[A-Z]{2}$"))),
			// State cannot be empty, and must be a string consisting of five digits
			validation.Key("Zip", validation.Required, validation.Match(regexp.MustCompile("^[0-9]{5}$"))),
		)),
	),
)
fmt.Println(err)
// Output:
// Address: (State: must be in a valid format; Street: the length must be between 5 and 50.); Email: must be a valid email address.

When the map validation is performed, the keys are validated in the order they are specified in Map. And when each key is validated, its rules are also evaluated in the order they are associated with the key. If a rule fails, an error is recorded for that key, and the validation will continue with the next key.

Validation Errors

The validation.ValidateStruct method returns validation errors found in struct fields in terms of validation.Errors which is a map of fields and their corresponding errors. Nil is returned if validation passes.

By default, validation.Errors uses the struct tags named json to determine what names should be used to represent the invalid fields. The type also implements the json.Marshaler interface so that it can be marshaled into a proper JSON object. For example,

type Address struct {
	Street string `json:"street"`
	City   string `json:"city"`
	State  string `json:"state"`
	Zip    string `json:"zip"`
}

// ...perform validation here...

err := a.Validate()
b, _ := json.Marshal(err)
fmt.Println(string(b))
// Output:
// {"street":"the length must be between 5 and 50","state":"must be in a valid format"}

You may modify validation.ErrorTag to use a different struct tag name.

If you do not like the magic that ValidateStruct determines error keys based on struct field names or corresponding tag values, you may use the following alternative approach:

c := Customer{
	Name:  "Qiang Xue",
	Email: "q",
	Address: Address{
		State:  "Virginia",
	},
}

err := validation.Errors{
	"name": validation.Validate(c.Name, validation.Required, validation.Length(5, 20)),
	"email": validation.Validate(c.Name, validation.Required, is.Email),
	"zip": validation.Validate(c.Address.Zip, validation.Required, validation.Match(regexp.MustCompile("^[0-9]{5}$"))),
}.Filter()
fmt.Println(err)
// Output:
// email: must be a valid email address; zip: cannot be blank.

In the above example, we build a validation.Errors by a list of names and the corresponding validation results. At the end we call Errors.Filter() to remove from Errors all nils which correspond to those successful validation results. The method will return nil if Errors is empty.

The above approach is very flexible as it allows you to freely build up your validation error structure. You can use it to validate both struct and non-struct values. Compared to using ValidateStruct to validate a struct, it has the drawback that you have to redundantly specify the error keys while ValidateStruct can a

Validation

Install / Use

README