Konval: validate without even trying.

Konval is an input-agnostic validation and sanitization library that is extremely easy to use.

Konval ships with common application validater / sanitizer functions to make your life as developer even better.

Konval is built on a series of high level abstractions that make it very easy and flexible to implement customized validation scenarios that can be dropped in and re-used easily across your program.

Simple validation

import konval
from konval.meta.standard import IsName

# Quick validation

konval.quick(IsName(), 'Peter M. Elias')
True
konval.quick(IsName(), 123453254)
False

konval.quick([IsName(), LengthBetween(3, 50)], 'Peter M. Elias')
True

# One off validation with error messages

konval.once(IsName(), 'Peter M. Elias')
u'Peter M. Elias'

konval.once(IsName(), 123456)
'The specified value "1234" is not a valid name.'

# Repeatable validation with schema

schema = {u'name': IsName()}

result = konval.validate(schema, {u'name': 'Peter M. Elias'})

print result.is_valid()
True

result = konval.validate(schema, {u'name': 'Not a real name...4342398!!*#'})

print result.is_valid()
False
print result.get_errors()
{u'name': ['The specified value "Not a real name...4342398!!*#" is not a valid name.']}

Installation

pip install konval

Features

• Includes a standard library of common validators
• Quick Boolean validation
• No strings attached one-off validation with results
• Schema validation for repeatable data defined validation
• Interface for automatically writing processed values to objects or data structures
• Predefined user friendly error messages for each validator
• Validator branching logic (AND, OR, IF, IFELSE, DEFAULT, CONSTANT)
• Data sanitization (type conversion, common transformations)

More examples

Lower Level Objects

# Some Base Validators

schema = {
	u'name': [IsType(str), LengthMinimum(10)],
	u'age': [IsType(int), Between(13, 75)]
}

# Combine Validators and Sanitizers

schema = {
	u'name': [IsType(str), LengthMinimum(10), ToType(unicode)],
	u'age': [IsType(str), ToType(int), Between(13, 75)]
}

# Use branching logic directly for complex schema

schema = {
	u'name': [IfElse(IsType(unicode), ToType(unicode)), LengthBetween(5, 255)],
	u'age': [Default(NotZero(), 13)]
}

# Extend Branching logic to create custom validation / sanitization chains

class IsStreet(And):

	def __init__(self):
		super(IsStreet, self).__init__(
			IsNonBlank(),
			IsRegexMatch(r'^[0-9]+ [a-z ]+$'),
			ToType(unicode),
			ToLower()
		)

result = konval.validate({u'street': IsStreet()}, {u'street': '1234 MOUNTAIN STREET'})

print result.get_value(u'street')
u'1234 mountain street'

Quick Reference

Some Common Validators

• IsAlpha
• IsAlphaNumeric
• IsEmailAddress
• IsName
• IsIpv4
• IsStreet
• IsZipcode
• IsNonBlank

Validator modules (containing 10 - 15 low level validators each)

• Containers
• Numbers
• Strings
• Types
• Vocabulary

Meta modules (containing application specific validators)

• Standard
• Form Input
• Command line input

Background

Validation and conversion of data.

The problem of sanitizing data (checking correctness and transforming to a useful form) is widespread throughout programming:

• How do I verify user input is correct?
• How do I munge data from a spreadsheet into dates and numbers?
• How do I convert raw database fields into a programmatic object?

Ian Bicking came up with a sensible idiom for this problem, embodied in his Formencode library [formencode]_: validation and conversion are one and the same thing, and can be handled by passing raw data through a chain of validators. Each validator checks and/or transforms the data and passes it on to the next.

In this spirit, konval is a package that provides:

• a rich library of validation objects
• base classes for easily producing custom validators

Konval is aimed at a one-way transformation of data, turning user input or stored data into Python objects. Certainly it could be used in the reverse direction, but this is not a primary use case. FormEncode is based around two-way (round trip) conversion of data, so that may be a useful alternative.

The name konval was chosen because:

1. there's already a Python library called "sanity"

2. out of "valcon", "valkon", "conval" etc. it was the one with the fewest hits on Google

References

• Konval Home Page
• PyPi
• Form Encode