Config File Validator

About

How many deployments have you done that needed to be rolled back due to a missing character in a configuration file in your repo? If you're like most teams that number is greater than zero. The config file validator was created to solve this problem by searching through your project and validating the syntax of all configuration files.

Where can you use this tool?

• In a CI/CD pipeline as a quality gate
• On your desktop to validate configuration files as you write them
• As a library within your existing go code

What types of files are supported?

• XML
• JSON
• YAML
• TOML
• INI
• Properties
• HCL

Installing

There are several ways to install the config file validator tool

Using go install

If you have a go environment on your desktop you can use go install to install the validator executable. The validator executable will be installed to the directory named by the GOBIN environment variable, which defaults to $GOPATH/bin or $HOME/go/bin if the GOPATH environment variable is not set.

go install github.com/Boeing/config-file-validator/cmd/validator

Using aqua

You can install the validator using aqua.

aqua g -i Boeing/config-file-validator

Executables

The config-file-validator is built as a statically linked binary which can be downloaded and executed on your target system. Binaries are available for Linux, Windows, and MacOS. Navigate to the releases page to download the latest version. Once the binary has been downloaded it needs to be installed by moving the downloaded file to a location on your operating system's PATH.

Using

Usage: validator [OPTIONS] [search_path]

positional arguments:
    search_path: The search path on the filesystem for configuration files. Defaults to the current working directory if no search_path provided

optional flags:
  -exclude-dirs string
    	Subdirectories to exclude when searching for configuration files
  -exclude-file-types string
    	A comma separated list of file types to ignore
  -reporter string
    	Format of the printed report. Options are standard and json (default "standard")

Examples

Standard Run

If the search path is omitted it will search the current directory

validator /path/to/search

Exclude dirs

Exclude subdirectories in the search path

validator --exclude-dirs=/path/to/search/tests /path/to/search 

Exclude file types

Exclude file types in the search path. Available file types are ini, json, yaml, yml, toml, and xml

validator --exclude-file-types=json /path/to/search

Customize report output

Customize the report output. Available options are standard and json

validator --reporter=json /path/to/search

Container Run

docker run -it --rm -v /path/to/config/files:/test config-file-validator:1.4.0 /test

Building from source

The project can be downloaded and built from source using an environment with golang 1.17+ installed. After successful build, the statically-linked binary can be moved to a location on your operating system PATH.

Linux

Build

CGO_ENABLED=0 \
GOOS=linux \
GOARCH=amd64 \
go build \
-ldflags='-w -s -extldflags "-static"' \
-tags netgo \
-o validator \
cmd/validator/validator.go

Install

cp ./validator /usr/local/bin/
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/validator

Windows

Build

CGO_ENABLED=0 \
GOOS=windows \
GOARCH=amd64 \
go build \
-ldflags='-w -s -extldflags "-static"' \
-tags netgo \
-o validator.exe \
cmd/validator/validator.go

Install

mkdir -p 'C:\Program Files\validator'
cp .\validator.exe 'C:\Program Files\validator'
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("C:\Program Files\validator", $env:Path, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Docker

You can also use the provided Dockerfile to build the config file validator tool in a container

docker build . -t config-file-validator

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please refer to our contributing guide

License

The Config File Validator is released under the Apache 2.0 License