Rule Development Manual

A Basic Check

In the following snippet you find a basic check implementation:

package de.zalando.zally.rule.nicecompany

import de.zalando.zally.rule.api.Check
import de.zalando.zally.rule.api.Context
import de.zalando.zally.rule.api.Rule
import de.zalando.zally.rule.api.Severity
import de.zalando.zally.rule.api.Violation

@Rule(
    ruleSet = NiceCompanyRuleSet::class,
    id = "001",
    severity = Severity.MUST,
    title = "Contain API Meta Information"
)
class ApiMetaInformationRule {

    @Check(severity = Severity.MUST)
    fun checkInfoTitle(context: Context): Violation? =
        if (context.api.info?.title.isNullOrBlank()) {
            context.violation("Title has to be provided")
        } else null

}

Check function has to be annotated with @Check and operate on a Context object. As output it should return either an optional Violation, or a List of Violations.

The check references to NiceCompanyRuleSet:

package de.zalando.zally.rule.zalando

import de.zalando.zally.core.AbstractRuleSet
import de.zalando.zally.rule.api.Rule
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component
import java.net.URI

@Component
class NiceCompanyRuleSet : AbstractRuleSet() {
    override val id: String = javaClass.simpleName
    override val title: String = "Nice Company's REST Guidelines"
    override val url: URI = URI.create("https://very.nice.compan.io/restguidelines/")
    override fun url(rule: Rule): URI {
        return url.resolve("#${rule.id}")
    }
}

Traverse the specification

Context object contains raw API specification as String (Context#source), parsed OpenAPI object (Context#openApi), and an optional Swagger object (Context#swagger). OpenAPI object represents OpenAPI 3 specification. Zally converts OpenAPI 2 specifications to OpenAPI 3. Normally, you would implement a Check against an OpenAPI object (Context#openApi). But you can also target Context#swagger if your Check doesn’t apply to OpenAPI 3 specifications.

• OpenAPI reference
• Swagger reference

The object structures correspond with the respective OpenAPI specifications.

Helper functions

Besides the specification objects, Zally also provides useful helper functions. Here are some examples:

• Context#validatePaths(pathFilter, action): List<Violation>
• Context#validateOperations(pathFilter, operationFilter, action): List<Violation>

See DefaultContext for more information.

Create a violation

In order to create a violation, you should use Context#violation(desc: String, value: Any?) function. It should contain violation description. We also encourage you to supply a node from the openApi object. The created violation will be associated with a specific location within the API specification.