caifand / cff-validator-docker

Dockerizing a simple validator for `CITATION.cff` files

Dockerizing a simple CITATION.cff validator

This repository provides a simple way to dockerize an, also simple, validator for CITATION.cff files in the Citation File Format.

Validate a CITATION.cff file

If you have Docker installed, you can validate your CITATION.cff file as follows:

1. Build the docker container

docker build -t cffvalidator \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdruskat/cff-validator-docker/1.0.0/Dockerfile

2. Run the docker container and validate your CITATION.cff file

# Display help
docker run --rm cffvalidator --help

# Validate CITATION.cff file
docker run --rm -v </absolute/path/to/your/CITATION.cff>:/cff/CITATION.cff cffvalidator

3. Inspect output

If the validation output (which comes from jsonschema by the way) is too verbose, search it for lines starting with jsonschema.exceptions.ValidationError. These usually contain the best hints.

"Under the hood"

The Dockerfile is where the "magic" happens, but it isn't really magic. Here is what really happens:

1. Define the base layer (here: a newer Python 3)
2. Set the working directory (/code)
3. Add the requirements.txt file containing the Python dependencies to the working directory
4. Install the Python dependencies from requirements.txt with pip
5. Add the latest main version of the Python 3 script we use in the Citation File Format project to validate CITATION.cff files during testing to the working directory
6. Add the latest main version of the Citation File Format JSON Schema file to the working directory
7. Provide an "entrypoint" to the container, which sets all the arguments

When running the container to validate a CFF file, you do the heavy lifting yourself by mounting the local file into the container, using docker run -v localfile:mounttarget.

Contributing

If you want to contribute to this project, please open an issue first. Contributions are accepted via pull requests. Thanks!

License

This work is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license.