Validate ODK XForms using Enketo's form engine
This app can be used:
- via the command-line, e.g. in a non-javascript form builder such as pyxform.
- as a nodeJS module to be used in your own javascript application
Live demo web application (meant for testing purposes only) that uses Enketo Validate (and ODK Validate) as a module: validate.enketo.org (source code)
- install nodeJS 8+
- install build tools for native modules with
apt-get install build-essential
To make the enketo-validate
command available from any folder on your machine.
$ npm install -g --production enketo-validate`
Alternatively, you can clone the repo and run npm install --production
. This will make the ./validate
command available from within the clone folder. Running npm link
makes the enketo-validate
command available from any folder on your machine.
$ enketo-validate path/to/form.xml
Errors are returned to stderr
and warnings to stdout
. If there is no stderr
output the form is valid.
$ enketo-validate --help
npm install -g --production enketo-validate
npm install enketo-validate --save
const validator = require('enketo-validate');
// Options:
// debug: [boolean] outputs unadulterated errors instead of cleaned ones
// openclinica: [boolean] runs the validator in a special OpenClinica mode
const options = {};
// Read the xform as string
const result = validator.validate( xformStr, options );
// The result has the following format:
// {
// warnings: [ 'a warning', 'another warning'],
// errors: ['an error', 'another error'],
// version: "0.0.0"
// }
// if errors.length is 0, the form passed validation
In it's current iteration, the validator does the following:
- It checks whether the XForm is a valid XML document.
- It performs some elementary ODK XForm structure checks.
- It checks if each bind
nodeset
exists in the primary instance. - It checks if appearance values are supported or deprecated for that type of question.
- It checks for each
<bind>
whether therelevant
,constraint
,calculate
, andrequired
expressions are supported and valid* XPath. - It checks whether required
<label>
elements exist. - It checks for duplicate question or group names.
- It checks for nested repeats.
- It checks for form controls that have a calculation but are not set as readonly.
* Note, that /path/to/nonexisting/node
is perfectly valid XPath.
The development of this application was funded by OpenClinica.
See the license document for this application's license.
See change log