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MetaSchemas

MetaSchemas in Frontier are default JSON-schemas designed to validate metadata that is included in the body of a resource. These schemas provide a standard way of describing the expected structure and content of metadata, which can be used to ensure consistency and accuracy of metadata across different resources.

Why MetaSchemas?​

Metadata is an essential component of many resources, including user profiles, organization descriptions, group memberships, and project details in Frontier. However, the structure and content of metadata can vary widely between different resources, making it challenging to validate and compare metadata across resources.

Metaschemas address this challenge by providing a standardized way of describing the expected structure and content of metadata. With the help of this, Frontier users can ensure that metadata is consistently structured and accurately represents the information it is intended to convey.

How Metaschemas Work!!​

Metaschemas are based on the JSON schema format, typically including properties that describe the expected structure and content of metadata, such as data types, formats, required fields, and allowed values. Additionally it include properties that provide context about the metadata, such as a description of the metadata, a version number, and authorship information.

For the ease of users of Frontier, we populate the Frontier database with default MetaSchemas for Users, Group, Organisation and Roles in Frontier during the database migrations.

One can easily updated these Schemas using the Frontier MetaSchema APIs.

Example MetaSchema​

A sample user MetaSchema is given below, and the second tab shows an example user metadata which is valid according to the given example schema.

{
  "title": "user metadata",
  "description": "JSON-schema for validating user metadata",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "label": {
      "title": "Label",
      "description": "Additional context about the user",
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "role": {
          "type": "string",
          "title": "Role",
          "description": "User's designation in the org"
        }
      }
    },
    "description": {
      "title": "Description",
      "description": "Some additional information for the user",
      "type": "string"
    }
  },
  "additionalProperties": false
}

Note: The default user, organization, group and project MetaSchemas are in this repository

Disabling MetaSchemas​

In a Frontier instance if one wants to diable the MetaSchema validation in either of users, group, organization or roles metadata. It is recommended to updated the MetaSchema's additionalProperties field value to true. Frontier provides APIs to manipulate these schemas at the endpoint /v1beta1/meta/schemas. See the API Reference for more details.