Validate all-contributors JSON.

[JimMadge]

Summary

Add a CI job to validate the all-contributors.rc JSON file.
Mistakes in this file can cause the table to be rendered incorrectly.

What needs to be done?

• Schema for all-contributors.rc (one here discussed in this issue)
• Add CI job to validate file (perhaps using JSON Schema Python package?)

Who can help?

• Anyone interested in CI and doing a little programming

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Updates

[gedankenstuecke]

I wonder if an alternative solution would just be to have the CI run the all-contributors CLI tool (to try) to build the updated contributor table? That would highlight any issues with the file itself and could also be a way to ensure that the table in the readme & the source file are in sync?

(Happy to be told that this isn't a great idea due to consequences I hadn't thought about!)

[JimMadge]

I think not quite. There are cases where all-contributors will run but the input isn't "correct" which results in odd looking tables. There is an example here.

[gedankenstuecke]

Gotcha, my (wrong) assumption was that the CLI tool would validate the JSON as part of the build process!

The alternative explanation could be though that the validation for that broken JSON would still have passed? Maybe it would be worth running that broken file through the validator to check if that would indeed catch it?

[JimMadge]

Yes, actually I'm not 100% sure what the CLI does there. It might recognise that the JSON is wrong, but does it's best effort. Or, the JSON may be valid JSON, just not conforming correctly to the schema so the behaviour is undefined.

If we can use the CLI to catch and flag these problems, it would be better than introducing new code.

[sgibson91]

Does the CLI have a validate subcommand? That would be the easiest place to start

[gedankenstuecke]

I fear it doesn't! I thought all-contributors check might do that, but instead it's used to check to compare contributors from GitHub with the ones credited in your .all-contributorsrc file, to make sure that credit is given where it's due.

My guess would be that all-contributors generate fails if the json is borked, but as @JimMadge pointed out for that it needs to be broken enough 🙈

[sgibson91]

Man, if it wasn't written in JS, I'd contribute so many features upstream to this bot (I just don't have time to learn the language)

[JimMadge]

Man, if it wasn't written in JS, I'd contribute so many features upstream to this bot (I just don't have time to learn the language)

💯

There are JS implementations of JSON Schema.

[aleesteele]

Just had this exact issue in #3592 ! Definitely demonstrates the need.

[gandrewgabriel]

Hi all - I've got a WIP script that might get us closer to sorting this. Opening a PR shortly...