IATI-Rulesets

Introduction

This is the source repository for the IATI Rulesets, more general information can be found on the IATI Standard website: https://iatistandard.org/en/iati-standard/203/rulesets/

These rulesets are part of IATI Standard Single Source of Truth (SSOT). For more detailed information about the SSOT, please see https://iatistandard.org/en/guidance/developer/ssot/

As part of the V1 Validator work, the JSON-based rules were migrated to an XSLT-based system, and some additional checks and feedback messages have been added in line with the IATI Standard. Please see IATI Validator Actual repository for information about the V1 (deprecated 09/2021). Please refer to the V1 Validator's XSLT-based Ruleset repository for an up-to-date version of each rule's narrative.

As part of the V2 Validator work completed in 09/2021, the JSON-based rules were enhanced. Some additional checks and feedback messages were added in line with the IATI Standard. See SPEC for more detail. A new JavaScript (Node) implementation of the Ruleset validator was developed as well. Please see Validator API repository for information about the new tool and to report bugs, issues, and other feedback. Email us on support@iatistandard.org for further clarification.

A more thorough description of this, along with a list of all rule names can be found in the Spec.

A description of the earlier Python based implementation can be found in the Spec.

Different Rulesets

• standard.json is a ruleset that tries to describe compliance to the standard, this is used by the Validator API
• standard_py.json is a ruleset that tries to describe compliance to the standard, used by the previous python validator.
• dfid.json is a more comprehensive set of rules based on DFID's requirements for organisations it works with
• ti-fallbacks.json finds problems with data that had to be worked around (using fallbacks) in transparency indicator tests

Rules not describable by a Ruleset

• Testing whether an element is on a certain codelist - this belongs in the IATI-Codelists (see testcodelists.py)
• Testing whether identifier are correct (e.g. uniqueness etc) - this requires information outside the scope of a single activity/file, whereas currently the rulesets operate in just this context. This may change in the future.

Both the above rules are included as part of the V2 Validator API. Please see that repository for more information.

GitHub Actions workflows

.github/workflows/main.yml does a few things when new code is pushed to version-2.0X branches.

• Runs flake8 linting
• Tests that rulesets/standard.json adheres to the JSON schema defined in schema.json
• Runs meta_tests.sh
• Pushes rulesets/standard.json to the Redis cache used by the IATI js validator api
• Triggers a workflow to update the .csv Validator rules in Validator Rule Tracker

Information for developers - Python version

This tool supports Python 3.x. To use this script, we recommend the use of a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv pyenv
source pyenv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Ruleset Tester - Python version

NOTE : The following Python tests have not been updated for the new JavaScript implementation of the rulesets and therefore are not comprehensive in testing IATI XML. Use the IATI js validator api for comprehensive testing.

A program is required to test whether a given xml file conforms to the rules in a ruleset JSON file. The rulesets is designed such that implementations of this can be made in multiple programming languages, so long as they implement the Spec.

Currently, a Python testrules.py tester is available. E.g.

# These commands output a line for each problem found
python testrules.py rulesets/standard.json file.xml

Tests for Testers - Python version

meta_tests.sh can be used to run a suite of example Ruleset and XML files (located in the meta_tests folder) against a Ruleset Tester. e.g.

./meta_tests.sh python testrules.py