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Validating File Data

pydantic is a great tool for validating data coming from various sources. In this section, we will look at how to validate data from different types of files.

Note

If you're using any of the below file formats to parse configuration / settings, you might want to consider using the pydantic-settings library, which offers builtin support for parsing this type of data.

JSON data

.json files are a common way to store key / value data in a human-readable format. Here is an example of a .json file:

{
    "name": "John Doe",
    "age": 30,
    "email": "[email protected]"
}

To validate this data, we can use a pydantic model:

import pathlib

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


json_string = pathlib.Path('person.json').read_text()
person = Person.model_validate_json(json_string)
print(person)
#> name='John Doe' age=30 email='[email protected]'

If the data in the file is not valid, pydantic will raise a ValidationError. Let's say we have the following .json file:

{
    "age": -30,
    "email": "not-an-email-address"
}

This data is flawed for three reasons:

  1. It's missing the name field.
  2. The age field is negative.
  3. The email field is not a valid email address.

When we try to validate this data, pydantic raises a ValidationError with all of the above issues:

import pathlib

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt, ValidationError


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


json_string = pathlib.Path('person.json').read_text()
try:
    person = Person.model_validate_json(json_string)
except ValidationError as err:
    print(err)
    """
    3 validation errors for Person
    name
    Field required [type=missing, input_value={'age': -30, 'email': 'not-an-email-address'}, input_type=dict]
        For further information visit https://errors.pydantic.dev/2.10/v/missing
    age
    Input should be greater than 0 [type=greater_than, input_value=-30, input_type=int]
        For further information visit https://errors.pydantic.dev/2.10/v/greater_than
    email
    value is not a valid email address: An email address must have an @-sign. [type=value_error, input_value='not-an-email-address', input_type=str]
    """

Often, it's the case that you have an abundance of a certain type of data within a .json file. For example, you might have a list of people:

[
    {
        "name": "John Doe",
        "age": 30,
        "email": "[email protected]"
    },
    {
        "name": "Jane Doe",
        "age": 25,
        "email": "[email protected]"
    }
]

In this case, you can validate the data against a list[Person] model:

import pathlib

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt, TypeAdapter


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


person_list_adapter = TypeAdapter(list[Person])  # (1)!

json_string = pathlib.Path('people.json').read_text()
people = person_list_adapter.validate_json(json_string)
print(people)
#> [Person(name='John Doe', age=30, email='[email protected]'), Person(name='Jane Doe', age=25, email='[email protected]')]
  1. We use TypeAdapter to validate a list of Person objects. TypeAdapter is a Pydantic construct used to validate data against a single type.

JSON lines files

Similar to validating a list of objects from a .json file, you can validate a list of objects from a .jsonl file. .jsonl files are a sequence of JSON objects separated by newlines.

Consider the following .jsonl file:

{"name": "John Doe", "age": 30, "email": "[email protected]"}
{"name": "Jane Doe", "age": 25, "email": "[email protected]"}

We can validate this data with a similar approach to the one we used for .json files:

import pathlib

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


json_lines = pathlib.Path('people.jsonl').read_text().splitlines()
people = [Person.model_validate_json(line) for line in json_lines]
print(people)
#> [Person(name='John Doe', age=30, email='[email protected]'), Person(name='Jane Doe', age=25, email='[email protected]')]

CSV files

CSV is one of the most common file formats for storing tabular data. To validate data from a CSV file, you can use the csv module from the Python standard library to load the data and validate it against a Pydantic model.

Consider the following CSV file:

name,age,email
John Doe,30,[email protected]
Jane Doe,25,[email protected]

Here's how we validate that data:

import csv

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


with open('people.csv') as f:
    reader = csv.DictReader(f)
    people = [Person.model_validate(row) for row in reader]

print(people)
#> [Person(name='John Doe', age=30, email='[email protected]'), Person(name='Jane Doe', age=25, email='[email protected]')]

TOML files

TOML files are often used for configuration due to their simplicity and readability.

Consider the following TOML file:

name = "John Doe"
age = 30
email = "[email protected]"

Here's how we validate that data:

import tomllib

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


with open('person.toml', 'rb') as f:
    data = tomllib.load(f)

person = Person.model_validate(data)
print(person)
#> name='John Doe' age=30 email='[email protected]'

YAML files

YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a human-readable data serialization format that is often used for configuration files.

Consider the following YAML file:

name: John Doe
age: 30
email: [email protected]

Here's how we validate that data:

import yaml

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


with open('person.yaml') as f:
    data = yaml.safe_load(f)

person = Person.model_validate(data)
print(person)
#> name='John Doe' age=30 email='[email protected]'

XML files

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.

Consider the following XML file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<person>
    <name>John Doe</name>
    <age>30</age>
    <email>[email protected]</email>
</person>

Here's how we validate that data:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


tree = ET.parse('person.xml').getroot()
data = {child.tag: child.text for child in tree}
person = Person.model_validate(data)
print(person)
#> name='John Doe' age=30 email='[email protected]'

INI files

INI files are a simple configuration file format that uses sections and key-value pairs. They are commonly used in Windows applications and older software.

Consider the following INI file:

[PERSON]
name = John Doe
age = 30
email = [email protected]

Here's how we validate that data:

import configparser

from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr, PositiveInt


class Person(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: PositiveInt
    email: EmailStr


config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read('person.ini')
person = Person.model_validate(config['PERSON'])
print(person)
#> name='John Doe' age=30 email='[email protected]'