Joi object validation: How to validate values with unknown key names?

wscourge picture wscourge · Jan 19, 2017 · Viewed 14.7k times · Source

I have an object with key names I cannot possibly know - they are created by user. However I do know what values they (keys) are going to store, and they (values) are going to be ISO strings. How do I validate those values? And, optionally, how do I validate uknown object's keys, i.e.:

 key: Joi.string().min(2).max(25)

What I have already tried was based on Joi API docs :

Another benefits of using Joi.object([schema]) instead of a plain JS object is >that you can set any options on the object like allowing unknown keys, e.g:

const schema = Joi.object({ arg: Joi.string().valid('firstname', 'lastname', 'title', 'company', 'jobtitle'), value: Joi.string(), }).pattern(/firstname|lastname/, Joi.string().min(2));

What I understood from the example is that arg key represents Joi.object()'s key, and value represents it's value.

My example:

campaign: Joi.object({
  arg: Joi.string().valid( 'unknown' ),
  value: Joi.date().iso(),
}).pattern( /unknown/, Joi.string().min(2).max(25) )

My input;

campaign: { g_ad_adwords: "2017-01-19T11:33:26.205Z" }

My error:

"campaign" fails because ["g_ad_adwords" is not allowed]

Answer

Ankh picture Ankh · Jan 19, 2017

Try this. It'll basically accept any key within an object campaign and the value must validate against Joi.date().iso()

campaign: Joi.object().pattern(/^/, Joi.date().iso())

This however will match any key. You can restrict this by padding out the regex a little. e.g. only word characters between 2 and 25 chars

campaign: Joi.object().pattern(/\w{2,25}/, Joi.date().iso())

UPDATE

Regarding the example in the Joi docs, I haven't tested it but here's my interpretation. I can understand that it's not the most straightforward example they could have given...

const schema = Joi.object({
    arg: Joi.string().valid('firstname', 'lastname', 'title', 'company', 'jobtitle'),
    value: Joi.string(),
}).pattern(/firstname|lastname/, Joi.string().min(2));

The objects to validate must contain the two attributes arg and valuewhere arg's value can be one of 'firstname', 'lastname', 'title', 'company', 'jobtitle' and value is just a string.

{
    arg: 'firstname',
    value: 'john'
}

{
    arg: 'lastname',
    value: 'smith'
}

{
    arg: 'jobtitle',
    value: 'brewer'
}

However it will also allow the object to have the attributes firstname and lastname where both of their values is a string with more than two characters. So the above examples could be condensed into a single valid object.

{
    firstname: 'john',
    lastname: 'smith',
    arg: 'jobtitle',
    value: 'brewer'
}