What is ajv-formats?
The ajv-formats package provides support for string formats in JSON Schema validation using the AJV validator. It includes various string formats for date-time, email, hostname, ipv4, ipv6, uri, uri-reference, uuid, and more, which can be used to validate data against specific format requirements.
What are ajv-formats's main functionalities?
Date-time format validation
Validates that a string is a valid date-time representation according to the format specified in the JSON Schema.
{"type":"string","format":"date-time"}
Email format validation
Validates that a string is a valid email address.
{"type":"string","format":"email"}
URI format validation
Validates that a string is a valid URI.
{"type":"string","format":"uri"}
UUID format validation
Validates that a string is a valid UUID.
{"type":"string","format":"uuid"}
Other packages similar to ajv-formats
jsonschema
The jsonschema package is a JSON Schema validator that also provides format validation. It supports similar functionalities to ajv-formats but is implemented in a different way and may have different performance characteristics.
tv4
tv4 is a tiny validator for JSON Schema v4. Like ajv-formats, it can validate formats specified in a JSON Schema, but it is less feature-rich and not as actively maintained as AJV.
joi
Joi is a powerful schema description language and data validator for JavaScript. Unlike ajv-formats, Joi does not use JSON Schema but instead provides its own schema definition language, which can be more expressive and easier to use for some developers.
ajv-formats
JSON Schema formats for Ajv

Usage
import Ajv from "ajv"
import addFormats from "ajv-formats"
const Ajv = require("ajv")
const addFormats = require("ajv-formats")
const ajv = new Ajv()
addFormats(ajv)
Formats
The package defines these formats:
See regular expressions used for format validation and the sources that were used in formats.ts.
Please note: JSON Schema draft-07 also defines formats iri
, iri-reference
, idn-hostname
and idn-email
for URLs, hostnames and emails with international characters. These formats are available in ajv-formats-draft2019 plugin.
Keywords to compare values: formatMaximum
/ formatMinimum
and formatExclusiveMaximum
/ formatExclusiveMinimum
These keywords allow to define minimum/maximum constraints when the format keyword defines ordering (compare
function in format definition).
These keywords are added to ajv instance when ajv-formats is used without options or with option keywords: true
.
These keywords apply only to strings. If the data is not a string, the validation succeeds.
The value of keywords formatMaximum
/formatMinimum
and formatExclusiveMaximum
/formatExclusiveMinimum
should be a string or $data reference. This value is the maximum (minimum) allowed value for the data to be valid as determined by format
keyword. If format
keyword is not present schema compilation will throw exception.
When these keyword are added, they also add comparison functions to formats "date"
, "time"
and "date-time"
. User-defined formats also can have comparison functions. See addFormat method.
require("ajv-formats")(ajv)
const schema = {
type: "string",
format: "date",
formatMinimum: "2016-02-06",
formatExclusiveMaximum: "2016-12-27",
}
const validDataList = ["2016-02-06", "2016-12-26"]
const invalidDataList = ["2016-02-05", "2016-12-27", "abc"]
Options
Options can be passed via the second parameter. Options value can be
- The list of format names that will be added to ajv instance:
addFormats(ajv, ["date", "time"])
Please note: when ajv encounters an undefined format it throws exception (unless ajv instance was configured with strict: false
option). To allow specific undefined formats they have to be passed to ajv instance via formats
option with true
value:
const ajv = new Ajv((formats: {date: true, time: true}))
- Format validation mode (default is
"full"
) with optional list of format names and keywords
option to add additional format comparison keywords:
addFormats(ajv, {mode: "fast"})
or
addFormats(ajv, {mode: "fast", formats: ["date", "time"], keywords: true})
In "fast"
mode the following formats are simplified: "date"
, "time"
, "date-time"
, "uri"
, "uri-reference"
, "email"
. For example "date"
, "time"
and "date-time"
do not validate ranges in "fast"
mode, only string structure, and other formats have simplified regular expressions.
Tests
npm install
git submodule update --init
npm test
License
MIT