Enforcing schema validation in MongoDB

Question

I'm looking for ways to validate that data being inserted into MongoDB matches a schema, e.g. has all the required fields and correct data types. I know Mongo itself is schemaless, but if I could validate the data at the application level before passing it to the Mongo driver, that'd be good.

I've looked at JSON-Schema. My biggest hesitation there is that I can only find one Java library for schema validation, and I don't know whether I should trust it, I prefer libraries backed by Apache or Google.

I've also looked at Apache Thrift, Avro, and Protocol Buffers, which aren't specifically validation frameworks, but they do each have a concept of a schema. I'd be interested if there's a way to piggy-back off of one of those to perform validation.

Any suggestions? Or should I embrace the schemalessness of Mongo and not even bother trying to validate the data?

Answer 1

In the upcoming Mongo 3.2 version they added document validation (slides).

You can specify validation rules for each collection, using validator option using almost all mongo query operators (except $geoNear, $near, $nearSphere, $text, and $where). You can read more about it in one of my answers.

Answer 2

Not sure if you're still looking but an object document mapper (ODM) would do the trick.

I have checked out both Morphia or Spring Data - MongoDB and either would take care of your type safety concerns since they would map your documents directly to Java classes.