ValidationToolkit

Declarative data validation framework, written in Swift

Programming language: Swift

License: MIT License

Tags: UI     Form & Settings    

Latest version: v0.6.2

README

Validation Toolkit

1. Introduction
   • Separation of concerns
   • All platforms availability
   • Open to extensibility
2. Requirements
3. Installation
   • Carthage
   • CocoaPods
   • Swift Package Manager
   • Manually
4. Usage Examples
   • Predicates
   • Constraints
   • Constraint Sets
5. Contribute
6. Meta
   • Credits and References

Introduction

ValidationToolkit is designed to be a lightweight framework specialised in data validation, such as email format, input length or passwords matching.

At the core of this project are the following principles:

• Separation of concerns
• Availability on all platforms
• Open to extensibility

Separation of concerns

Think of ValidationToolkit as to an adjustable wrench more than to a Swiss knife.

With this idea in mind, the toolkit is composed from a small set of protocols, structs and classes than can be easily composed to fit your project needs.

All platforms availability

Since validation can take place at many levels, ValidationToolkit is designed to support iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and native Swift projects, such as server apps.

Open to extensibility

Every project is unique in it's challenges and it's great when we can focus on solving them instead of spending our time on boilerplate tasks.

ValidationToolkit is compact and offers you the foundation you need to build data validation around your project needs. In addition, it includes a set of common validation predicates that most of the projects can benefit of: email validation, required fields, password matching, url validation and many more to come.

Requirements

• iOS 8.0+ / macOS 10.10+ / tvOS 9.0+ / watchOS 2.0+
• Xcode 8.1+
• Swift 3.0+

Installation

Carthage

You can use Carthage to install ValidationToolkit by adding it to your Cartfile:

github "nsagora/validation-toolkit"

Run carthage update to build the framework and drag the built ValidationToolkit.framework into your Xcode project.

Setting up Carthage

Carthage is a decentralised dependency manager that builds your dependencies and provides you with binary frameworks.

You can install Carthage with Homebrew using the following command:

$ brew update
$ brew install carthage

CocoaPods

You can use CocoaPods to install ValidationToolkit by adding it to your Podfile:

source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
platform :ios, '8.0'
use_frameworks!

target 'YOUR_TARGET_NAME' do
    pod 'ValidationToolkit'
end

Then, run the following command:

$ pod install

Note that this requires CocoaPods version 1.0.0, and your iOS deployment target to be at least 8.0.

Setting up CocoaPods

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Cocoa projects. You can install it with the following command:

$ gem install cocoapods

Swift Package Manager

You can use the Swift Package Manager to install ValidationToolkit by adding it to your Package.swift file:

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "YOUR_PROJECT_NAME",
    targets: [],
    dependencies: [
        .Package(url: "https://github.com/nsagora/validation-toolkit", majorVersion: 1),
    ]
)

Note that the Swift Package Manager is still in early design and development, for more information checkout its GitHub Page.

Manually

To use this library in your project manually you may:

1. for Projects, just drag the Sources folder into the project tree
2. for Workspaces, include the whole ValidationToolkit.xcodeproj

Usage example

For a comprehensive list of examples try the ValidationToolikit.playground:

1. Download the repository locally on your machine
2. Open ValidationToolkit.workspace
3. Build ValidationToolkit iOS target
4. Select the ValidationToolkit playgrounds from the Project navigator.

Predicates

The Predicate represents the core protocol and has the role to evaluate if an input matches on a given validation condition.

At ValidationToolkit's core we have the following two predicates, which allow developers to compose predicates specific to the project needs.

RegexPredicate

let predicate = RegexPredicate(expression: "^[a-z]$")
predicate.evaluate(with: "a") // returns true
predicate.evaluate(with: "5") // returns false
predicate.evaluate(with: "ab") // returns false

BlockPredicate

let pred = BlockPredicate<String> { $0.characters.count > 2 }
predicate.evaluate(with: "a") // returns false
predicate.evaluate(with: "abc") // returns true

In addition, the toolkit offers a set of common validation predicates that your project can benefit of:

EmailPredicate

let predicate = EmailPredicate()
predicate.evaluate(with: "hello@") // returns false
predicate.evaluate(with: "[email protected]") // returns true
predicate.evaluate(with: "hé[email protected]") // returns true

URLPredicate

let predicate = URLPredicate()
predicate.evaluate(with: "http://www.url.com") // returns true
predicate.evaluate(with: "http:\\www.url.com") // returns false

PairMatchingPredicate

let predicate = PairMatchingPredicate()
predicate.evaluate(with: ("swift", "swift")) // returns true
predicate.evaluate(with: ("swift", "obj-c")) // returns false

On top of that, developers can build more advanced or complex predicates by extending the Predicate protocol, and/ or by composing or decorating the existing predicates:

Custom Predicate

public class MinLenghtPredicate: Predicate {

    public typealias InputType = String

    private let minLenght:Int

    public init(minLenght:Int) {
        self.minLenght = minLenght
    }

    public func evaluate(with input: String) -> Bool {
        return input.characters.count >= minLenght
    }
}

let predicate = MinLenghtPredicate(minLenght: 5)
predicate.evaluate(with: "alph") // returns false
predicate.evaluate(with: "alpha") // returns true
predicate.evaluate(with: "alphabet") // returns true

Constraints

A PredicateConstraint represents a data type that links a Predicate to an Error, in order to provide useful feedback for the end users.

PredicateConstraint

let predicate = BlockPredicate<String> { $0 == "Mr. Goodbytes" }
let constraint = PredicateConstraint(predicate: predicate, error: MyError.magicWord)

let result = constraint.evaluate(with: "please")
switch result {
case .valid:
    print("access granted...")
case .invalid(let summary):
    print("Ah Ah Ah! You didn't say the magic word!")
}  // prints "Ah Ah Ah! You didn't say the magic word!"

enum MyError:Error {
    case magicWord
}

Constraint Sets

A ConstraintSet represents a collection of constraints that allows the evaluation to be made on:

• any of the constraints
• all constraints

To provide context, a ConstraintSet allows us to constraint a piece of data as being required and also as being a valid email.

ConstraintSet</summary

An example is that of the registration form, whereby users are prompted to enter a strong password. This process typically entails some form of validation, but the logic itself is often unstructured and spread out through a view controller.

ValidationToolkit seeks instead to consolidate, standardise, and make explicit the logic that is being used to validate user input. To this end, the below example demonstrates construction of a full ConstraintSet object that can be used to enforce requirements on the user's password data:

let lowerCase = RegexPredicate(expression: "^(?=.*[a-z]).*$")
let upperCase = RegexPredicate(expression: "^(?=.*[A-Z]).*$")
let digits = RegexPredicate(expression: "^(?=.*[0-9]).*$")
let specialChars = RegexPredicate(expression: "^(?=.*[!@#\\$%\\^&\\*]).*$")
let minLenght = RegexPredicate(expression: "^.{8,}$")

var passwordConstraints = ConstraintSet<String>()
passwordConstraints.add(predicate: lowerCasePredicate, error: Form.Password.missingLowercase)
passwordConstraints.add(predicate: upperCasePredicate, error: Form.Password.missingUpercase)
passwordConstraints.add(predicate: digitsPredicate, error: Form.Password.missingDigits)
passwordConstraints.add(predicate: specialChars, error: Form.Password.missingSpecialChars)
passwordConstraints.add(predicate: minLenght, error: Form.Password.minLenght(8))

let password = "3nGuard!"
let result = passwordConstraints.evaluateAll(input: password)

switch result {
case .valid:
    print("Wow, that's a 💪 password!")
case .invalid(let summary):
    print(summary.errors.map({$0.localizedDescription}))
} // prints "Wow, that's a 💪 password!"

From above, we see that once we've constructed the passwordConstraints, we're simply calling evaluateAll(input:) to get a Summary of our evaluation result. This summary can then be handled as we please.

Contribute

We would love you for the contribution to ValidationToolkit, check the LICENSE file for more info.

Meta

This project is developed and maintained by the members of iOS NSAgora, the community of iOS Developers of Iași, Romania.

Distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more information.

[https://github.com/nsagora/validation-toolkit]

Credits and references

We got inspired from other open source projects and they worth to be mentioned below for reference:

• https://github.com/adamwaite/Validator
• https://github.com/jpotts18/SwiftValidator