Skip to content

AJV

This tutorial shows you how you can validate your data with decorators.

Validation feature uses Ajv and json-schema to perform the model validation.

Installation

Before using the validation decorators, we need to install the ajv module.

sh
npm install --save ajv @tsed/ajv
sh
yarn add ajv @tsed/ajv
sh
pnpm add ajv @tsed/ajv
sh
bun add ajv @tsed/ajv

Then import @tsed/ajv into your Server:

typescript
import {Configuration} from "@tsed/di";
import "@tsed/ajv"; // import ajv ts.ed module

@Configuration({
  ajv: {
    returnsCoercedValues: true // returns coerced value to the next pipe instead of returns original value (See #2355)
  }
})
export class Server {}

The AJV module allows a few settings to be added through the ServerSettings (all are optional):

  • options are AJV specific options passed directly to the AJV constructor,
  • errorFormatter can be used to alter the output produced by the @tsed/ajv package.

The error message could be changed like this:

typescript
import {Configuration} from "@tsed/di";
import "@tsed/ajv"; // import ajv ts.ed module

@Configuration({
  ajv: {
    errorFormatter: (error) => `At ${error.modelName}${error.dataPath}, value '${error.data}' ${error.message}`,
    verbose: true
  }
})
export class Server {}

Decorators

Ts.ED gives some decorators to write your validation model:

Loading in progress...

Examples

Model validation

A model can be used on a method controller along with BodyParams or other decorators, and will be validated by Ajv.

typescript
import {Required, MaxLength, MinLength, Minimum, Maximum, Format, Enum, Pattern, Email} from "@tsed/schema";

export class CalendarModel {
  @MaxLength(20)
  @MinLength(3)
  @Required()
  title: string;

  @Minimum(0)
  @Maximum(10)
  rating: number;

  @Email()
  email: string;

  @Format("date") // or date-time, etc...
  createDate: Date;

  @Pattern(/hello/)
  customInput: string;

  @Enum("value1", "value2")
  customInput: "value1" | "value2";
}

Validation error

When a validation error occurs, AJV generates a list of errors with a full description like this:

json
[
  {
    "keyword": "minLength",
    "dataPath": ".password",
    "schemaPath": "#/properties/password/minLength",
    "params": {"limit": 6},
    "message": "should NOT be shorter than 6 characters",
    "modelName": "User"
  }
]

User defined keywords

Ajv allows you to define custom keywords to validate a property.

You can find more details on the different ways to declare a custom validator on this page: https://ajv.js.org/docs/keywords.html

Ts.ED introduces the Keyword decorator to declare a new custom validator for Ajv. Combined with the CustomKey decorator to add keywords to a property of your class, you can use more complex scenarios than what basic JsonSchema allows.

For example, we can create a custom validator to support the range validation over a number. To do that, we have to define the custom validator by using Keyword decorator:

typescript
import {Keyword, KeywordMethods} from "@tsed/ajv";
import {array, number} from "@tsed/schema";

@Keyword({
  keyword: "range",
  type: "number",
  schemaType: "array",
  implements: ["exclusiveRange"],
  metaSchema: array().items([number(), number()]).minItems(2).additionalItems(false)
})
class RangeKeyword implements KeywordMethods {
  compile([min, max]: number[], parentSchema: any) {
    return parentSchema.exclusiveRange === true ? (data: any) => data > min && data < max : (data: any) => data >= min && data <= max;
  }
}

Then we can declare a model using the standard decorators from @tsed/schema:

Finally, we can create a unit test to verify if our example works properly:

typescript
import "@tsed/ajv";
import {PlatformTest} from "@tsed/platform-http/testing";
import {getJsonSchema} from "@tsed/schema";
import {Product} from "./Product.js";
import "../keywords/RangeKeyword.js";

describe("Product", () => {
  beforeEach(PlatformTest.create);
  afterEach(PlatformTest.reset);

  it("should call custom keyword validation (compile)", () => {
    const ajv = PlatformTest.get<Ajv>(Ajv);
    const schema = getJsonSchema(Product, {customKeys: true});
    const validate = ajv.compile(schema);

    expect(schema).to.deep.equal({
      properties: {
        price: {
          exclusiveRange: true,
          range: [10, 100],
          type: "number"
        }
      },
      type: "object"
    });

    expect(validate({price: 10.01})).toEqual(true);
    expect(validate({price: 99.99})).toEqual(true);
    expect(validate({price: 10})).toEqual(false);
    expect(validate({price: 100})).toEqual(false);
  });
});

WARNING

If you planed to create keyword that transform the data, you have to set returnsCoercedValues to true in your configuration.

With "code" function

Starting from v7 Ajv uses CodeGen module for all pre-defined keywords - see codegen.md for details.

Example even keyword:

Formats

You can add and replace any format using Formats decorator. For example, the current format validator for uri doesn't allow empty string. So, with this decorator you can create or override an existing ajv-formats validator.

typescript
import {Formats, FormatsMethods} from "@tsed/ajv";

const NOT_URI_FRAGMENT = /\/|:/;
const URI =
  /^(?:[a-z][a-z0-9+\-.]*:)(?:\/?\/(?:(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*@)?(?:\[(?:(?:(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){6}|::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){5}|(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){4}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,1}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){3}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,2}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){2}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,3}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}:|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,4}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::)(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d\d?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d\d?))|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,5}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,6}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::)|[Vv][0-9a-f]+\.[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:]+)\]|(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d\d?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d\d?)|(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)(?::\d*)?(?:\/(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)*|\/(?:(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+(?:\/(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)*)?|(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+(?:\/(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)*)(?:\?(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)?(?:#(?:[a-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)?$/i;

@Formats("uri", {type: "string"})
export class UriFormat implements FormatsMethods<string> {
  validate(str: string): boolean {
    // http://jmrware.com/articles/2009/uri_regexp/URI_regex.html + optional protocol + required "."
    return str === "" ? true : NOT_URI_FRAGMENT.test(str) && URI.test(str);
  }
}

Then, we can import this class to our server as follows:

typescript
import {Configuration} from "@tsed/di";
import "@tsed/ajv"; // import ajv ts.ed module
import "./formats/UriFormat"; // just import the class, then Ts.ED will mount automatically the new format

@Configuration({
  ajv: {
    // ajv options
  }
})
export class Server {}

Now, this example will be valid:

typescript
import {Uri, getJsonSchema} from "@tsed/schema";
import {PlatformTest} from "@tsed/platform-http/testing";
import {AjvService} from "@tsed/ajv";
import "./UriFormat.js";

describe("UriFormat", () => {
  beforeEach(() => PlatformTest.create());
  afterEach(() => PlatformTest.reset());
  it("should validate empty string when we load the our custom Formats for AJV", async () => {
    class MyModel {
      @Uri() // or @Format("uri")
      uri: string;
    }

    const service = PlatformTest.get<AjvService>(AjvService);
    const jsonSchema = getJsonSchema(MyModel);

    expect(jsonSchema).to.deep.equal({
      properties: {
        uri: {
          format: "uri",
          type: "string"
        }
      },
      type: "object"
    });

    const result = await service.validate({uri: ""}, {type: MyModel});

    expect(result).to.deep.eq({uri: ""});
  });
});

Author

Maintainers

Released under the MIT License.