fireworks-schema 1.0.0

JSON Schema for FireWorks

JSON Schema for FireWorks

This package provides a JSON schema for the FireWorks package.

Why should I use JSON schema?

The input for FireWorks is often provided in JSON and YAML and generated by third-party software that is unaware of the valid data types in FireWorks. Latent mismatches of data types may produce run-time errors, such as missing keywords or wrong data types, that are more difficult to handle than a validation of the initial input.

The fireworks_schema package provides a formal human- and machine-readable description of the data types used in classes in FireWorks. Additionally, a function is provided that checks the validity of JSON and YAML inputs immediately before deserialization.

Using fireworks_schema to validate input for FireWorks

There are three ways to activate JSON schema validation:

• Call the schema validator explicitly
• Activate automatic schema validation
• Modify the list of classes for automatic validation

Call the schema validator explicitly

This is the case when you use Python but read JSON/YAML serialized objects provided externally. In the following example, a serialized workflow object is loaded from a YAML file and validated against the Workflow schema:

  import yaml
  import fireworks_schema
  from fireworks import Workflow

  with open('empty_fws.yaml', 'rt') as yf:
      dct = yaml.safe_load(yf)
  fireworks_schema.validate(dct, 'Workflow')
  wf = Workflow.from_dict(dct)

Activate automatic schema validation

To activate automatic schema validation you must specify:

  JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE: true

in your FWConfig file. For more details about managing your FWConfig file see the FW Config tutorial.

The default value of JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE is false.

If automatic validation is turned on, i.e. JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE is true, then validation is performed only for built-in classes specified in the list JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE_LIST, whenever an object of these classes is loaded from file. You can find the default JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE_LIST in fw_config.py file in the FireWorks source.

Modify the list of classes for automatic validation

You can modify the default JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE_LIST in your FWConfig file. For example, to turn on automatic validation for serialized Firework and Workflow objects only:

  JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE: true
  JSON_SCHEMA_VALIDATE_LIST: [Firework, Workflow]