Validation in pySBOL3

Validating Documents

The most common use of validation will be validating entire documents. After objects have been loaded, created, or manipulated, a programmer can invoke validate on the Document to get a report of any errors or warnings. If the length of the report is 0, or if the report evaluates to boolean False, there are no validation issues. If there are validation issues it is possible to iterate over the validation errors and warnings as show in the next section.

Here is an example that validates a newly loaded document:

>>> import sbol3
RDFLib Version: 5.0.0
>>> doc = sbol3.Document()
>>> doc.read('combine2020.ttl')
>>> report = doc.validate()
>>> len(report)
0
>>> bool(report)
False

Validating Objects

The pySBOL3 library includes a capability to generate a validation report for an SBOL3 object or an SBOL3 Document. The report can be used to check your work or fix issues with your document or object.

Here is a short example of how to validate an object. We intentionally create a Range with end before start, which is invalid SBOL3. This generates a validation error in the ValidationReport:

>>> import sbol3
RDFLib Version: 5.0.0
>>> seq_uri = 'https://github.com/synbiodex/pysbol3/sequence'
>>> start = 10
>>> end = 1
>>> r = sbol3.Range(seq_uri, start, end)
>>> report = r.validate()
>>> len(report)
1
>>> bool(report)
True
>>> for error in report.errors:
...     print(error.message)
...
sbol3-11403: Range.end must be >= start

Validating an object automatically validates any child objects. Invoking validate() on a document will validate all objects contained in that document.

Extending Validation

If you are building extension classes and want to add custom validation to those objects you can extend the pySBOL3 validation in your custom classes. To do so, define your own validate method, call the super method, then perform your own validation, adding warnings or errors to the validation report. Finally, your validate method must return the ValidationReport to the caller. This new method will automatically get called when a Document is validated or when the an instance of this class is validated.

Here is an example:

def validate(self, report: ValidationReport = None) -> ValidationReport:

    # Invoke the super method, and hold on to the resulting report
    report = super().validate(report)

    # Run my own validation here
    if self.x >= self.x2:
        report.addError(self.identity, None, 'X must be less than X2')
    if self.x > 100:
        report.addWarning(self.identity, None, 'X values over 100 do not work well')

    # Return the report to the caller
    return report