[GSOC’21] JSON Schema WEBUI Generator

Prologue

Hello there, Major objective of this project is to update the JSON schema of the API generator tool and other tools to the latest version (2020-12 not perfectly sure) and integrate the schema with a WebUI generator framework to generate HTML forms.

Prior

Currently, JSON Forms is being used to generate the forms from a JSON Schema of version draft 3 for the API and other tools.

Here is the form(API Generator) generated by the JSON Forms, Which currently uses JSON Schema of version draft 3 to generate the forms.

This API generator simply generates a JSON file for the API.

This also has several other fields, which contains specified data about the community.

Discrepancy

As the JSON schema versions have been updated to 2020 – 12, but the current schema of the API and other tools is still at version draft 3. Updating the schema to the latest version is no such big deal. but there is an inconsistency with the JSON Forms as it only supports up to the draft version 3 of JSON Schema.

Viable Way-out

In order to update the schema to the latest version, I have to find a WEBUI generator framework or tool that generates HTML forms from the latest version of the JSON schema.

But Unfortunately, there is no tool or framework that generates forms from the latest schema version 2020-12.
As it is officially mentioned here. Then I had to limit myself to the previous versions, so my mentor Andi suggested choosing draft 7 as our base version for our tests and implementations.
Then I had to choose a framework that supports version draft 7 and above so that we can update the schema to higher versions in the future by considering the support and compatibility of the WEBUI generator.

Frameworks

I have chosen several frameworks based on the version support and compatibility of the frameworks to integrate the schema and test out the results.

UI Schema for React

The first framework I want to try out is UI Schema for React. because the official documentation of the JSON schema states that, this framework supports the most recent version of schema draft(2019-09) but with limitations.

Apart from this, it has this pretty decent documentation here.

React JSON Schema Forms (mozilla)

Next, I have this, while testing on the playground demo, This doesn’t support $ref. But yet I want to give it a try. Its documentation is here. It seems this has some limitations.

Restspace Schema Form (MIT)

This is something cool, This doesn’t depend on the versions of the schema but this depends on the features of the schema. All the supported features are here. As I see It supports everything, which might be in our schema, and I could not able to find good documentation for this framework yet.

JSONForms (jsonforms.io) (EclipseSource)

This supports version draft 7 of the JSON schema. It has documentation here. I see this is an extension to the current JSON Forms used by the API and other tools.

Targets

  • Developing the Schema to the latest version (taking draft 7 as base version).
  • Choosing a Frameworks (mostly UI Schema for React).
  • Integrating the updated schema with the framework to generate the forms.
  • Examining the forms (validating input data and functionality of the forms).
  • Try using a higher version of schema, and test out all the functionality.
  • Finding and resolving the bugs.
  • Updating all the tools (using the schema).
  • Final testing for all the tools using new generator and updated schema and resolving bugs if any.

~ Shiva Shankar Genji aka sh15h4nk

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