New widget for Table Schema validation in Grist (beta)

[Pierre_Camilleri]

Hello Grist Community!

We are excited to share a new widget developped in collaboration between the Validata team and the data.gouv.fr team.

The widget enables validation of your Grist data against a Table Schema, with additional validation capabilities for French data formats.

For example, if you have a table with columns containing postal codes, our widget will highlight all the cells not stricly following the postal code format, as defined by the schema, and will display the error details on row selection.

Currently available in French only, the plugin is part of a widget with a broader scope of streamlining open data production and publication workflows to data.gouv.fr.

How to use it

Here’s a quick overview of the validation process:

1. Enter the full URL of a data schema (Table Schema) — a file that defines the validation rules;
2. Run the validation on the data in your Grist document;
3. View errors directly in the sheet (invalid cells are marked in red), with detailed error messages of the selected row displayed on the plugin pane.

This integration inside Grist makes feedback loops much faster: errors are shown directly in your table, allowing you to quickly identify and fix issues without leaving Grist.

Under the hood, the plugin makes API calls to the validation service Validata.

Try it out

Custom widget URL
https://grist-plugin.opendatateam.fr/validata

Plugin User Guide (in French):

docs/validata.md

Plugin source code:

GitHub - datagouv/grist-plugin-opendata

Feedback, suggestions, bug reports?
The plugin is still in Beta. Feel free to open an issue on the GitHub repository:

datagouv/grist-plugin-opendata