How to validate structure (or schema) of dictionary in Python?

Without using libraries, you could also define a simple recursive function like this:

def check_structure(struct, conf):
    if isinstance(struct, dict) and isinstance(conf, dict):
        # struct is a dict of types or other dicts
        return all(k in conf and check_structure(struct[k], conf[k]) for k in struct)
    if isinstance(struct, list) and isinstance(conf, list):
        # struct is list in the form [type or dict]
        return all(check_structure(struct[0], c) for c in conf)
    elif isinstance(struct, type):
        # struct is the type of conf
        return isinstance(conf, struct)
    else:
        # struct is neither a dict, nor list, not type
        return False

This assumes that the config can have keys that are not in your structure, as in your example.


Update: New version also supports lists, e.g. like 'foo': [{'bar': int}]


You may use schema (PyPi Link)

schema is a library for validating Python data structures, such as those obtained from config-files, forms, external services or command-line parsing, converted from JSON/YAML (or something else) to Python data-types.

from schema import Schema, And, Use, Optional, SchemaError

def check(conf_schema, conf):
    try:
        conf_schema.validate(conf)
        return True
    except SchemaError:
        return False

conf_schema = Schema({
    'version': And(Use(int)),
    'info': {
        'conf_one': And(Use(float)),
        'conf_two': And(Use(str)),
        'conf_three': And(Use(bool)),
        Optional('optional_conf'): And(Use(str))
    }
})

conf = {
    'version': 1,
    'info': {
        'conf_one': 2.5,
        'conf_two': 'foo',
        'conf_three': False,
        'optional_conf': 'bar'
    }
}

print(check(conf_schema, conf))