2020-12 Release Notes

The previous draft (2019-09) introduced a lot of new concepts including $recursiveRef/$recursiveAnchor, unevaluatedProperties/unevaluatedItems, vocabularies, and more. Since then, these new features have seen multiple implementations and usage in real schemas. This draft is mostly dedicated to changes related to applying the lessons we've learned about implementing and using these new features in the wild.

This document attempts to put information most useful to schema authors toward the top and information for implementation authors toward the bottom.

Changes to items and additionalItems

The keywords used for defining arrays and tuples have been redesigned to help lower the learning curve for JSON Schema. Since the items keyword was used for both types, we would often see people mistakenly defining a tuple when they meant to define an array and not understand why only the first item in the array was validating.

The items and additionalItems keywords have been replaced with prefixItems and items where prefixItems has the same functionality as the array-of-schemas for of the old items and the new items keyword has the same functionality as the old additionalItems keyword.

Although the meaning of items has changed, the syntax for defining arrays remains the same. Only the syntax for defining tuples has changed. The idea is that an array has items (items) and optionally has some positionally defined items that come before the normal items (prefixItems).

Here are some examples to illustrate the changes.

Open tuple

Draft 2019-09	Draft 2020-12
data { "items": [ { "$ref": "#/$defs/foo" }, { "$ref": "#/$defs/bar" } ]}	data { "prefixItems": [ { "$ref": "#/$defs/foo" }, { "$ref": "#/$defs/bar" } ]}

Closed tuple

Draft 2019-09	Draft 2020-12
data { "items": [ { "$ref": "#/$defs/foo" }, { "$ref": "#/$defs/bar" } ], "additionalItems": false}	data { "prefixItems": [ { "$ref": "#/$defs/foo" }, { "$ref": "#/$defs/bar" } ], "items": false}

Tuple with constrained additional items

Draft 2019-09	Draft 2020-12
data { "items": [ { "$ref": "#/$defs/foo" }, { "$ref": "#/$defs/bar" } ], "additionalItems": { "$ref": "#/$defs/baz" }}	data { "prefixItems": [ { "$ref": "#/$defs/foo" }, { "$ref": "#/$defs/bar" } ], "items": { "$ref": "#/$defs/baz" }}

$dynamicRef and $dynamicAnchor

The $recursiveRef and $recursiveAnchor keywords were replaced by the more powerful $dynamicRef and $dynamicAnchor keywords. $recursiveRef and $recursiveAnchor were introduced in the previous draft to solve the problem of extending recursive schemas. As the "recursive" keywords got some use and we understood them better, we discovered how we could generalize them to solve even more types of problems. The name change reflects that these keywords are useful for more than just extending recursive schemas.

A $dynamicAnchor can be thought of like a normal $anchor except that it can be referenced across schemas rather than just in the schema where it was defined. You can think of the old $recursiveAnchor as working the same way except that it only allowed you to create one anchor per schema, it had to be at the root of the schema, and the anchor name is always empty.

$dynamicRef works the same as the old $recursiveRef except that fragments are no longer empty ("$dynamicRef": "#my-anchor" instead of "$recursiveRef": "#") and non-fragment-only URIs are allowed. When a $dynamicRef contains a non-fragment-only URI-Reference, the schema the URI-Reference resolves to is used as the starting point for dynamic resolution.

Here's how you would covert a schema using $recursiveRef to use $dynamicRef.

1// tree schema, extensible
2{
3"$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2019-09/schema",
4"$id": "https://example.com/tree",
5"$recursiveAnchor": true,
6"type": "object",
7"properties": {
8"data": true,
9"children": {
10  "type": "array",
11  "items": { "$recursiveRef": "#" }
12}
13}
14}
15// strict-tree schema, guards against misspelled properties
16{
17"$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2019-09/schema",
18"$id": "https://example.com/strict-tree",
19"$recursiveAnchor": true,
20"$ref": "tree",
21"unevaluatedProperties": false
22}

1// tree schema, extensible
2{
3"$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
4"$id": "https://example.com/tree",
5"$dynamicAnchor": "node",
6"type": "object",
7"properties": {
8"data": true,
9"children": {
10  "type": "array",
11  "items": { "$dynamicRef": "#node"}
12}
13}
14}
15// strict-tree schema, guards against misspelled properties
16{
17"$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
18"$id": "https://example.com/strict-tree",
19"$dynamicAnchor": "node",
20"$ref": "tree",
21"unevaluatedProperties": false
22}

contains and unevaluatedItems

In the previous draft, it wasn't specified how or if the contains keyword affects the unevaluatedItems keyword. This draft specifies that any item in an array that passes validation of the contains schema is considered "evaluated".

This allows you to use contains to express some constraints more cleanly than you could in previous drafts. This example show how you can express an array that has some item matching one schema and everything else matching another schema.

Draft 2019-09	Draft 2020-12
data { "type": "array", "contains": { "type": "string" }, "items": { "anyOf": [ { "type": "string" }, { "type": "number" } ] } }	data { "type": "array", "contains": { "type": "string" }, "unevaluatedItems": { "type": "number" } }

Unfortunately, this change means you may not be able to use contains in some situations you did before. Consider this draft 2019-09 schema describing a tuple of two strings where one of the two must be three or more characters long and any additional items are not allowed.

schema

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2019-09/schema", "type": "array", "items": [{ "type": "string" }, { "type": "string" }], "contains": { "type": "string", "minLength": 3 }, "unevaluatedItems": false}

Given this schema, the instance ["a", "b", "ccc"] will fail because "ccc" is considered unevaluated and fails the unevaluatedItems keyword. Now let's naively convert that example to a draft 2020-12 schema.

schema

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema", "type": "array", "prefixItems": [{ "type": "string" }, { "type": "string" }], "contains": { "type": "string", "minLength": 3 }, "unevaluatedItems": false}

Given this schema, the instance ["a", "b", "ccc"] will pass because "ccc" is considered evaluated and doesn't not apply to the unevaluatedItems keyword. To fix this problem we can use the same boolean algebra transformation we used to use before we had the contains keyword.

schema

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema", "type": "array", "prefixItems": [{ "type": "string" }, { "type": "string" }], "not": { "items": { "not": { "type": "string", "minLength": 3 } } }, "unevaluatedItems": false}

Given this schema, the instance ["a", "b", "ccc"] will fail because "ccc" is considered unevaluated and fails the unevaluatedItems keyword like it did in previous drafts.

Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are now expected (but not strictly required) to support unicode characters. Previously, this was unspecified and implementations may or may not support this unicode in regular expressions.

Media Type Changes

JSON Schema defines two media types, application/schema+json and application/schema-instance+json. This draft drops support for the schema media type parameter. It's caused a lot of confusion and disagreement. Since we haven't seen any evidence of anyone actually using it, it was decided to remove it for now.

Embedded Schemas and Bundling

In Draft 2019-09, the meaning of $id in a sub-schema changed from indicating a base URI change within the current schema to indicating an embedded schema independent of the parent schema. A schema that contains one or more embedded schemas is called a "Compound Schema Document". This draft introduces guidance on how bundlers should embedded schemas to create Compound Schema Documents.

If you reference an external schema, that schema can declare its own $schema and that may be different than the $schema of the referencing schema. Implementations need to be prepared to switch processing modes or throw an error if they don't support the $schema of the referenced schema. Embedded schemas work exactly the same way. They may declare a $schema that is not the same as the parent schema and implementations need to be prepared to handle the $schema change appropriately.

A notable consequence of embedded schemas having a different $schema than its parent is that implementations can't validate Compound Schema Documents directly against the meta-schema. The Compound Schema Document needs to be decomposed and each Schema Resource needs to be validated individually against the appropriate meta-schema for that schema.

This draft introduces official guidance on how to use embedded schemas to bundle schemas into a Compound Schema Document. The approach is designed to not have to modify schemas (other than adding to $defs) so that output results remain as similar as possible whether you are validating the bundled schema or following external references. Here's an example of a customer schema with external references that we want to bundle.

schema

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12", "$id": "https://example.com/schema/customer",
"type": "object", "properties": { "name": { "type": "string" }, "phone": { "$ref": "/schema/common#/$defs/phone" }, "address": { "$ref": "/schema/address" } }}

data

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12", "$id": "https://example.com/schema/address",
"type": "object", "properties": { "address": { "type": "string" }, "city": { "type": "string" }, "postalCode": { "$ref": "/schema/common#/$defs/usaPostalCode" }, "state": { "$ref": "/$defs/states" } },
"$defs": { "states": { "enum": [...] } }}

data

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2019-09", "$id": "https://example.com/schema/common",
"$defs": { "phone": { "type": "string", "pattern": "^[\+]?[(]?[0-9]{3}[)]?[-\s\.]?[0-9]{3}[-\s\.]?[0-9]{4,6}$" }, "usaPostalCode": { "type": "string", "pattern": "^[0-9]{5}(?:-[0-9]{4})?$" }, "unsignedInt": { "type": "integer", "minimum": 0 } }}

To bundle these schemas, we simply add each of the referenced schemas as embedded schemas using $defs. Here's what the bundled schema would look like.

data

{ "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12", "$id": "https://example.com/schema/customer",
"type": "object", "properties": { "name": { "type": "string" }, "phone": { "$ref": "/schema/common#/$defs/phone" }, "address": { "$ref": "/schema/address" } },
"$defs": { "https://example.com/schema/address": { "$id": "https://example.com/schema/address",
"type": "object", "properties": { "address": { "type": "string" }, "city": { "type": "string" }, "postalCode": { "$ref": "/schema/common#/$defs/usaPostalCode" }, "state": { "$ref": "#/$defs/states" } },
"$defs": { "states": { "enum": [...] } } }, "https://example.com/schema/common": { "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2019-09", "$id": "https://example.com/schema/common",
"$defs": { "phone": { "type": "string", "pattern": "^[\+]?[(]?[0-9]{3}[)]?[-\s\.]?[0-9]{3}[-\s\.]?[0-9]{4,6}$" }, "usaPostalCode": { "type": "string", "pattern": "^[0-9]{5}(?:-[0-9]{4})?$" }, "unsignedInt": { "type": "integer", "minimum": 0 } } } }}

Here are a few things you might notice from this example.

1. No $refs were modified. Even local references are unchanged.
2. https://example.com/schema/common#/ $defs/unsignedInt got pulled in with the common schema even though it isn't used. It's allowed to trim out the extra definitions, but not necessary.
3. https://example.com/schema/address doesn't declare a $schema. Because it uses the same $schema as https://example.com/schema/customer, it can skip that declaration and use the $schema from the schema it's embedded in.
4. https://example.com/schema/common uses a different $schema than the document it's embedded in. That's allowed.
5. Definitions from https://example.com/schema/common are used in both of the other schemas and only needs to be included once. It isn't necessary for bundlers to embed a schema inside another embedded schema.

Annotations

Implementations that collect annotations should now include annotations for unknown keywords in the "verbose" output format. The annotation value for an unknown keyword is the keyword's value.

Vocabulary Changes

The unevaluatedProperties and unevaluatedItems keywords have been moved from the applicator vocabulary to their own designated vocabulary which is required in the default meta-schema. In Draft 2019-09, these keywords were expected to throw an error if not implemented. This was a special-case behavior of the applicator vocabulary. Moving the "unevaluated" keywords into their own vocabulary allows us to remove that special-case and also allowing for dialects to be constructed that don't require these keywords.

The format vocabulary was broken into two separate vocabularies. The "format-annotation" vocabulary treats the format keyword as an annotation and the "format-assertion" vocabulary treats the format keyword as an assertion. The "format-annotation" vocabulary is used in the default meta-schema and is required. In Draft 2019-09, format should be evaluated as an annotation by default and implementations could provide configuration to change the behavior to evaluate format as an assertion. The separate vocabularies allow for removing the special configuration requirements and just use the vocabulary system to express which behavior should be used.