Dictionary-like JSON schema

Question

I have a json object that can contain any number of nested objects with certain specification, for example:

{
  "Bob": {
    "age": "42",
    "gender": "male"
  },
  "Alice": {
    "age": "37",
    "gender": "female"
  }
}

And would like to have a schema looking something like:

{
  "type": "object",
  "propertySchema": {
    "type": "object",
    "required": [
      "age",
      "gender"
    ],
    "properties": {
      "age": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "gender": {
        "type": "string"
      }
    }
  }
}

I know that I can turn that into array and push 'name' inside the objects. In that case my schema would look like:

{
  "type": "array",
  "items": {
    "type": "object",
    "required": [
      "name",
      "age",
      "gender"
    ],
    "properties": {
      "name": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "age": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "gender": {
        "type": "string"
      }
    }
  }
}

but I would like to have a dictionary-like structure. Is it possible to make such schema?

Answer 1

additionalProperties is your keyword:

{
    "type" : "object",
    "additionalProperties" : {
        "type" : "object",
        "required" : [
            "age",
            "gender"
        ],
        "properties" : {
            "age" : {
                "type" : "string"
            },
            "gender" : {
                "type" : "string"
            }
        }
    }
}

additionalProperties can have following values with different meanings:

• "additionalProperties": false No more properties are allowed at all.
• "additionalProperties": true Any more properties are allowed. This is the default behavior.
• "additionalProperties": {"type": "string"} Additional properties (of arbitrary name) are allowed, if they have value of given type ("string" here).
• "additionalProperties": {*any schema*} Additional properties must satisfy the provided schema, such as the example provided above.