Skip to content
You're viewing an older version of this GitHub Action. Do you want to see the latest version instead?
book-open

GitHub Action

cff-validator

v1

cff-validator

book-open

cff-validator

Validate your repository's CITATION.cff file using R software

Installation

Copy and paste the following snippet into your .yml file.

 
              
- name: cff-validator

              
  uses: dieghernan/cff-validator@v1
Learn more about this action in dieghernan/cff-validator

Choose a version

cff-validator

latest-version CITATION-cff

A GitHub action to validate CITATION.cff files with R.

Introduction

If you have a Citation File Format (cff) on your repository this action would check its validity against the defined schema.

A full valid workflow:

on:
  push:
    branches: [main, master]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main, master]

name: CITATION-cff
jobs:
  Validate-CITATION-cff:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Validate CITATION.cff
    env:
      GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      RSPM: "https://packagemanager.rstudio.com/cran/__linux__/focal/latest"
      
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        
      # This is needed for workflows running on
      # ubuntu-20.04 or later
      - name: Install V8 
        if: runner.os == 'Linux'
        run: |
          sudo apt-get install -y libv8-dev

      - name: Validate CITATION.cff
        uses: dieghernan/cff-validator@main

On error, the action shows the results of the validation highlighting the fields with errors.

For more examples, see the actions provided on this path.

Inputs available

  • citation-path: Path to .cff file to be validated. By default it selects a CITATION.cff file on the root of the repository:
  - name: Validate CITATION.cff
    uses: dieghernan/cff-validator@main
    with:
      citation-path: "examples/CITATION.cff"

Building on Linux

This action relies on the R package V8, that has some extra requirements when running on Linux systems. You would need to add the following steps to your action in order to make it run:

      # This is needed for workflows running on
      # ubuntu-20.04 or later
      - name: Install V8 
        run: |
          sudo apt-get install -y libv8-dev
          
      # This is needed for workflows running on
      # previous versions of ubuntu
      - name: Install V8 on old ubuntu
        run: |
          # Ubuntu Xenial (16.04) and Bionic (18.04) only
          sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cran/v8
          sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install libnode-dev

See a full featured implementation on this example.

Under the hood (for useRs)

This action runs a R script that can be easily replicated. See a full reprex:

R script 
# Libraries
install.packages(c("yaml","jsonlite", "jsonvalidate"))

cit_path <- "CITATION.cff"

citfile <- yaml::read_yaml(cit_path)
# All elements to character
citfile <- rapply(citfile, function(x) as.character(x), how = "replace")

# Convert to json
cit_temp <- tempfile(fileext = ".json")
jsonlite::write_json(citfile, cit_temp, pretty = TRUE)

# Manage brackets
citfile_clean <- readLines(cit_temp)

# Search brackets to keep
# Keep ending and starting
keep_lines <- grep('", "', citfile_clean)
keep_lines <- c(keep_lines, grep("\\[$", citfile_clean))
keep_lines <- c(keep_lines, grep(" \\],", citfile_clean))
keep_lines <- c(keep_lines, grep(" \\]$", citfile_clean))
keep_lines <- sort(unique(keep_lines))

if (all(keep_lines > 0)) {
  keep_string <- citfile_clean[keep_lines]
  citfile_clean[keep_lines] <- ""
}
# Remove rest of brackets
citfile_clean <- gsub('["', '"', citfile_clean, fixed = TRUE)
citfile_clean <- gsub('"]', '"', citfile_clean, fixed = TRUE)

citfile_clean[grep("\\[", citfile_clean)]
if (all(keep_lines > 0)) {
  # Add "good" brackets back
  citfile_clean[keep_lines] <- keep_string
}

writeLines(citfile_clean, cit_temp)

# Download latest scheme
schema_temp <- tempfile("schema", fileext = ".json")
download.file("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/main/schema.json",
  schema_temp,
  mode = "wb", quiet = TRUE
)

# Validate
result <- jsonvalidate::json_validate(cit_temp,
  schema_temp,
  verbose = TRUE
)
# Results
message("------\n")

if (result == FALSE) {
  print(attributes(result)$errors)
  message("\n")
  stop(cit_path, " file no valid")
} else {
  message(cit_path, " is valid")
}