Fully expanding $ref references in a json schema with Python

Question

We have a fairly large and complex json schema with many includes via $ref references. Ideally using Python and jsonschema I'd like to take those schema and fully expand the references (recursively) to get the full schema.

Output in the form of a dict is fine (the standard data structure that jsonschema uses to represent a schema).

Answer 1

If you check the json documentation.
You will find that circular $ref is not recommended but not prohibited. So, in this case, it is not possible to fully expand all $ref

But if you sure that you do not have loops in your $ref I would recommend you to use this repo It has helped me in such situation. Code is really simple so you can change it on your own.

Answer 2

I have tested and can also recommend the following module:

https://github.com/gazpachoking/jsonref

which is on PyPI. The documentation is good, has been very recently maintained (October 2018), and the syntax is such that it is a drop-in replacement for the standard json module:

from the home page:

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> import jsonref

>>> # An example json document
>>> json_str = """{"real": [1, 2, 3, 4], "ref": {"$ref": "#/real"}}"""
>>> data = jsonref.loads(json_str)
>>> pprint(data)  # Reference is not evaluated until here
{'real': [1, 2, 3, 4], 'ref': [1, 2, 3, 4]}