valid

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Let the business logic only accept valid values!

• Validate custom types by composing primitive validation functions.

• Use one common API for validating all kind of business rules including aspects of the application state.

• One common error type for all kind of constraint validations. It is designed to help with error messages that are meaningful to the user of an application.

valid is a validation library for the [Rust] language. It let us write validation functions for our custom types through composition of available validators. Any custom written validation function again can be used to build validations for even more complex types.

The valid crate defines the types and traits to implement validation functions and use them to validate our values. Additionally it defines primitive constraints.

Most primitive constraints validate one property of the validated type. E.g. the Length constraint validates the length property of strings, container types or slices. If the constraint property is not covered by a trait of the std-lib, a related trait is defined, which we call a property trait.

The builtin constraints are implemented for generic types T that implement the related property trait.

One goal of valid is to provide one common API that can be used to validate all kind of business rules. Constraints are grouped into one of 3 categories:

1. field level constraint, e.g. only a range of values is allowed
2. the relation of 2 fields, e.g. 2 password fields must match or 2 fields must define a range
3. business rules that verify some aspect of the application state, e.g. a username must be unique

Any violation of constraints are returned in one common error type, regardless of the category of the business rule that defines the constraint.

One principle for the core functionality of this crate is to have no dependencies other than the std-lib. Support for types of 3rd party crates such as [bigdecimal] and [chrono] are implemented as optional crate features. So you can pick and choose which types you need in your application and which dependencies you will have in your project.

Features

• Common validation API for validating constraints on field values, constraints on related fields and constraints on application state
• Definition of primitive constraints, such as Length, CharCount, Bound and MustMatch
• Generic implementations of the validation function for the provided constraints
• Composition of validation functions to implement validation for complex types
• One common error type for validation errors of all kind of constraints
• Accumulation of multiple constraint violations
• Separation of the validation process itself and presentation of validation errors
• The ValidationError is designed to help with composing detailed and helpful error messages targeted to the users of an application. Localization or internationalization of error messages is not scope of this crate.
• The core functionality has no dependencies to 3rd party crates
• Error codes are compatible with the naming convention in the [fluent] project
• The error type ValidationError implements std::error::Error and can be used with the [failure] crate
• Serialization and deserialization of ValidationError through [serde] (optional crate feature "serde1")
• Support for widely used types of 3rd party crates through optional crate features
• Support for BigDecimal of the [bigdecimal] crate (optional crate feature "bigdecimal")
• Support for BigInt of the [num-bigint] crate (optional crate feature "num-bigint")
• Support for DateTime and NaiveDate of the [chrono] crate (optional crate feature "chrono")

Usage

For detailed information on how to use [valid] including lots of examples see the API documentation at docs.rs.

To use valid we add it as a dependency to our Cargo.toml file:

toml [dependencies] valid = "0.3"

valid provides some of its functionality as optional crate features. Some features enable support for validating a type that is provided by this crate. Other features enable the implementation of additional constraints. To use any optional functionality we must enable the relevant crate feature in our Cargo.toml file. All crate features can be enabled in any combination.

Here is an overview of all crate features:

| crate feature | supported types | enabled constraints | |---------------|-------------------------|---------------------| | bigint | BigInt | | | bigdecimal | BigDecimal | | | chrono | DateTime, NaiveDate | | | regex | | Pattern |

Additionally the "serde1" feature enables serialization and deserialization of ValdiationError using the [serde] crate:

toml [dependencies] valid = { version = "0.3", features = ["serde1"] }