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Validation Rules

Entities can have validation rules that are run during EntityManager.flush():

import { authorConfig as config } from "./entities";

class Author extends AuthorCodegen {}

// Rules are added by calls to config.addRule
config.addRule((author) => {
  if (author.firstName && author.firstName === author.lastName) {
    return "firstName and lastName must be different";
  }
});

// Rules can be also async
config.addRule(async (author) => {
  // Note: As-is this rule will not re-run whenever our has has a new book;
  // see the next section on "Reactive Validation Rules" for how to fix this
  const books = await author.books.load();
  if (books.length === 0) {
    return "Must have at least one book";
  }
});

If any validation rule returns a string, i.e. an error message, then flush() will throw a ValidationErrors error and not issue any INSERTs or UPDATEs to the database for any entity changed in the current EntityManager.

tip

If you would like to skip validation rules, you can pass skipValidation: true to flush(). Use this technique with caution, as it can create invalid entities.

info

Joist's API of calling config.addRule is non-traditional in that validation rules "live outside the entity", i.e. they are not inside a validate() method on the Author class.

This setup is intentional, because in the next section, it allows Joist to use reactive validation hints to discover when rules should run (i.e. when Book.title changes, re-run this specific Author validation rule), even if main entity (Author) hasn't been loaded from the database yet (or potentially the Author class has not even been instantiated yet).

See Issues 198 for tracking ideas around this.

Reactive Validation Rules​

Validation rules can also use a reactive hint (similar to Joist's load hints) to run cross-entity validation logic.

The reactive hints include which fields the rule needs to read, and then Joist will automatically invoke the rule whenever any field in the hint changes, even if it's on another entity (i.e. Book.title), and the rule's main entity (i.e. Author) hasn't been loaded from the database yet.

For example this rule:

// Example of reactive rule being fired on Book change
config.addRule({ books: ["title"], firstName: {} }, async (a) => {
  if (a.books.get.length > 0 && a.books.get.find((b) => b.title === a.firstName)) {
    return "A book title cannot be the author's firstName";
  }
});

If your database has five entities:

  • Author:1 firstName=a1
  • Author:2 firstName=a2
  • Book:1 title=b1 author=Author:1
  • Book:2 title=b2 author=Author:1
  • Book:3 title=b3 author=Author:2

Anytime Book:1 or Book:2 have their title changed, Joist will automatically load Author:1 and re-run the validation rule.

To ensure validation rules only access fields that their hint declares, the lambda is passed a special Reacted<Author, { books: "title", firstName: {}} mapped type that only allows access to the title and firstName fields.

Reactive Hints​

Reactive hints can be either a single field name, an array of field names, or a nested hash.

For example, reactive hints on an Author might be:

  • "firstName" - run whenever our firstName field changes
  • ["firstName", "lastName"] - run whenever our firstName or lastName fields change
  • { books: "title" } - run whenever any of our books' titles change
  • { books: { title: {}, reviews: "rating" } - run whenever any of our books' titles change, or any of our books' reviews' ratings change
    • This is an example of, when you want a nested hint for both a child/parent and as well as field, we use title: {} as a "nested hint" even though the title is itself a terminal hint.

And reactive hints on a Book might be

  • { author: "firstName" } - run whenever our author's firstName changes
  • { author: ["firstName", "lastName" } - run whenever our author's firstName or lastName changes
tip

If your validation rules needs to access a field, without causing reactivity to it, you can use a :ro or _ro suffix in the field name. For example:

// Example of using firstName for the error message, so not needing to react on it
config.addRule(["books", "firstName:ro"], (a) => {
  if (a.books.get.length === 13) {
    return `Author ${a.firstName} cannot have 13 books`;
  }
});

Built-in Rules​

Required Fields​

Joist's joist-codegen automatically adds required rules to any column with a not null constraint.

For example, in the AuthorCodegen.ts base class, joist-codegen automatically adds the lines:

authorConfig.addRule(newRequiredRule("firstName"));
authorConfig.addRule(newRequiredRule("initials"));
authorConfig.addRule(newRequiredRule("numberOfBooks"));
authorConfig.addRule(newRequiredRule("createdAt"));
authorConfig.addRule(newRequiredRule("updatedAt"));

Cannot Be Updated​

If a field can only be set on create (i.e. a "parent"), you can use cannotBeUpdated:

// Don't let the parent change
config.addRule(cannotBeUpdated("parent"));

Also, you can make this conditional, i.e. on a status:

// Only allow updating cost while draft
config.addRule(cannotBeUpdated("cost", (e) => e.isDraft));

Database Constraints​

Generally, Joist prefers implementing domain model validation rules in TypeScript code, where rules are easier to write and test than if written as SQL triggers/stored procedures/etc.

That said, some rules like unique constraints are best enforced by the database, which is great, but their errors can cryptic, and not error messages you want shown to users, e.g.:

INSERT INTO "authors" (...) VALUES (...) - duplicate key value violates
 unique constraint "authors_publisher_id_unique_index"

Joist has basic support for recognizing "a constraint of the given name failed" and mapping that to a pretty error message, for example in Author.ts you could configure failures on the authors_name_unique_index:

// Convert unique(name) to a validation error
config.addConstraintMessage("authors_name_unique_index", "There is already an Author with that name");

Note that the error message must be hard-coded, because when the database fails a unique constraint, Joist can't easily tell which specific entity is causing the error (e.g. we may be saving 5 authors, and only the 4th one caused the failure).