Validation

2013-02-23 - Proposal Draft

Process

• New or modified nodes are validated
  • Invalid nodes are not saved
  • The node's natural language representation is computed and saved for future reference
    • This enables presenting the node as it was defined at the time of save in case the underlying data or fields have changed in the mean time
• Existing nodes are re-validated upon use
  • Invalid nodes are flagged enabled = False to prevent returning an empty or erroneous result set
  • Validation warnings and errors will be annotated on the node directly for client use
• Disabled nodes due to warnings can be forced to be used by setting enabled = True, nodes with validation errors however cannot be enabled
  • Until the node is changed or removed, this flag will remain so the node does not get redundantly validated

Client Considerations

• show error and warning messages per concept/field
• provide remediation options
  • confirm removal for each node with validation errors
    • this will remove the node permanently from the tree
  • for nodes with only warnings, the node can be re-enabled
    • certain use cases may deal with volatile data and the data may be valid eventually

Specification

These are considered the common attributes across validation. The way they are utilized during validation is node dependent.

• field
  • An integer representing the primary key identifer for a DataField instance, e.g. 1
  • Period-delimited string representing a natural key for a DataField instance, e.g. "app.model.field"
  • An array of strings representing a natural key for a DataField instance, e.g. ["app", "model", "field"]
• concept
  • An integer representing the primary key identifier of the DataConcept the field is contained in. Clients that take advantage of concepts will likely need to supply this in order to correctly repopulate and/or organize data on the client.
• language
  • A read-only string that is a natural language representation of the node. This is annotated server-side and is used for information purposes and future validation purposes.
• enabled
  • A boolean that is used during re-validation of the node on the server. If the node is no longer valid due to data changes or the field is not longer available, this flag is set to false. Clients may provide the option to override this auto-disabling policy for nodes with only warnings (not errors) by changing the flag to True. This is preferred over removing the flag to prevent the re-validation process happening subsequent times. Nodes with errors are recommended to be removed.
• warnings
  • A read-only array of warnings that result during re-validation of the node. These are considered warnings since there is no harm in applying the node.
• errors
  • A read-only array of errors that result during re-validation of the node. Errors are different from warnings in that the node is considered broken and cannot be enabled. Clients may choose to remove the node from the tree or leave it for historical reasons.

Warnings

No general warnings are defined.

Errors

• FIELD_OR_CONCEPT_REQUIRED
  • Either field or concept is required
• FIELD_DOES_NOT_EXIST
  • The field the node represents no longer exists
• CONCEPT_DOES_NOT_EXIST
  • The concep the node represents no longer exists
• PERMISSION_DENIED
  • Permission is denied for the field or concept

Implementations

• Context Validation
• View/Facet Validation