jtd-infer: Generate JSON Typedef schemas from examples

JSON Type Definition, aka
RFC8927, is an easy-to-learn,
standardized way to define a schema for JSON data. You can use JSON Typedef to
portably validate data across programming languages, create dummy data, generate
code, and more.

jtd-infer is a tool that generates ("infers") a JSON Typedef schema from
example data.

bashCopy
echo '{ "name": "Joe", "age": 42 }' | jtd-infer | jq

jsonCopy
{
  "properties": {
    "age": {
      "type": "uint8"
    },
    "name": {
      "type": "string"
    }
  }
}

Installation

On macOS, you can install jtd-infer via Homebrew:

bashCopy
brew install jsontypedef/jsontypedef/jtd-infer

For all other platforms, you can download and extract the binary yourself from
the latest release. You can also install using cargo by running:

bashCopy
cargo install jtd_infer

Usage

For high-level guidance on how to use jtd-infer, see "Inferring a JSON
Typedef Schema from Real Data" in the JSON Typedef website docs.

Basic Usage

To invoke jtd-infer, you can either:

1. Have it read from STDIN. This is the default behavior.
2. Have it read from a file. To do this, pass a file name as the last argument
   to jtd-infer.

jtd-infer reads a sequence of JSON messages. So for example, if you have a
file like this in data.json:

jsonCopy
{ "name": "john doe", "age": 42 }
{ "name": "jane doe", "age": 45 }

You can give it to jtd-infer in two ways:

bashCopy
# Both of these do the same thing.
cat data.json | jtd-infer
jtd-infer data.json

In both cases, you'd get this output:

jsonCopy
{"properties":{"name":{"type":"string"},"age":{"type":"uint8"}}}

Changing the default number type

⚠️ This section is often important if you are retrofitting JSON Typedef to a
JavaScript-based application.

By default, JSON Typedef will infer the most specific possible type for inputs.
So, for example, it will guess uint8 if it sees a 12 in your input:

bashCopy
echo "12" | jtd-infer

jsonCopy
{"type":"uint8"}

However, if you're giving JSON Typedef a small sample set, or if you in practice
have data that is far smaller than the actual numerical datatypes your
application supports, then this behavior may be undesirable. For example, it's
common for JavaScript-based applications to actually support float64 for all
numeric inputs, because JavaScript numbers are IEEE double-precision floats.

To tell JSON Typedef to prefer a different type than the one it would normally
guess, you can use --default-number-type to change its behavior. For example:

bashCopy
# JavaScript numbers are all float64s, and so it's pretty common for JavaScript
# applications to not check if inputs are integers or within a particular range.
#
# If you don't want to make your JSON Typedef schema strict about decimal,
# negative, or out of int range numbers, you can pass float64 as the default
# number type.
echo "12" | jtd-infer --default-number-type=float64

jsonCopy
{"type":"float64"}

Another use-case is if you're writing an application that uses signed 32-bit
ints everywhere, and your example data simply never in practice has examples of
negative numbers or numbers too big for 8- or 16-bit numbers. You can achieve
that by using int32 as your default number type:

bashCopy
echo "12" | jtd-infer --default-number-type=int32

jsonCopy
{"type":"int32"}

Note that jtd-infer will ignore your default if it doesn't match with the
data. For example, int32 only works with whole numbers, so if a decimal number
or a number too big for 32-bit signed integers comes in, it will fall back to
float64:

bashCopy
# both of these output {"type":"float64"}
echo "3.14" | jtd-infer --default-number-type=int32
echo "9999999999" | jtd-infer --default-number-type=int32

Advanced Usage: Providing Hints

By default, jtd-infer will never output enum, values, or discriminator
schemas. This is by design: by always being consistent with what it outputs,
jtd-infer is more predictable and reliable.

If you want jtd-infer to output an enum, values, or discriminator, you
can use the --enum-hint, --values-hint, and --discriminator-hint flags.
You can pass each of these flags multiple times.

All of the hint flags accept JSON
Pointers as values. If you're used to the
JavaScript-y syntax of referring to things as $.foo.bar, the equivalent JSON
Pointer is /foo/bar. jtd-infer treats - as a "wildcard". /foo/-/bar is
equivalent to the JavaScript-y $.foo.*.bar.

As a corner-case, if you want to point to the root / top-level of your input,
then use the empty string as the path. See "Using
--values-hint" for an example of this.

Using --enum-hint

By default, strings are always inferred to be { "type": "string" }:

bashCopy
echo '["foo", "bar", "baz"]' | jtd-infer

jsonCopy
{"elements":{"type":"string"}}

But you can instead have jtd-infer output an enum by providing a path to the
string you consider to be an enum. In this case, it's any element of the root of
the array -- the JSON Pointer for that is /-:

bashCopy
echo '["foo", "bar", "baz"]' | jtd-infer --enum-hint=/-

jsonCopy
{"elements":{"enum":["bar","baz","foo"]}}

Using --values-hint

By default, objects are always assumed to be "structs", and jtd-infer will
generate properties / optionalProperties. For example:

bashCopy
echo '{"x": [1, 2, 3], "y": [4, 5, 6], "z": [7, 8, 9]}' | jtd-infer

jsonCopy
{"properties":{"y":{"elements":{"type":"uint8"}},"z":{"elements":{"type":"uint8"}},"x":{"elements":{"type":"uint8"}}}}

If your data is more like a map / dictionary, pass a values-hint that points
to the object that you want a values schema from. In this case, that's the
root-level object, which in JSON Pointer is just an empty string:

bashCopy
echo '{"x": [1, 2, 3], "y": [4, 5, 6], "z": [7, 8, 9]}' | jtd-infer --values-hint=

jsonCopy
{"values":{"elements":{"type":"uint8"}}}

Using --discriminator-hint

By default, objects are always assumed to be "structs", and jtd-infer will
generate properties / optionalProperties. For example:

bashCopy
echo '[{"type": "s", "value": "foo"},{"type": "n", "value": 3.14}]' | jtd-infer

jsonCopy
{"elements":{"properties":{"value":{},"type":{"type":"string"}}}}

If your data has a special "type" property that tells you what's in the rest of
the object, then use --discriminator-hint to point to that property.
jtd-infer will output an appropriate discriminator schema instead:

bashCopy
echo '[{"type": "s", "value": "foo"},{"type": "n", "value": 3.14}]' | jtd-infer --discriminator-hint=/-/type | jq

jsonCopy
{
  "elements": {
    "discriminator": "type",
    "mapping": {
      "s": {
        "properties": {
          "value": {
            "type": "string"
          }
        }
      },
      "n": {
        "properties": {
          "value": {
            "type": "float64"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}