API Reference — Validation¶

Validator¶

Runs all registered validation rules against a project.

from behave_model import Validator

validator = Validator()
issues = validator.validate(project)

Properties¶

Property	Type	Description
`rules`	`list[ValidationRule]`	Registered validation rules

Methods¶

Method	Returns	Description
`validate(project)`	`list[ValidationIssue]`	Run all rules and collect issues
`validate_strict(project)`	`list[ValidationIssue]`	Like `validate`, but raises `ValidationError` on any error-severity issue
`add_rule(rule)`	`Validator`	Add a custom validation rule (returns self for chaining)
`remove_rule(name)`	`Validator`	Remove a rule by name (returns self for chaining)

ValidationRule¶

Base class for custom validation rules.

from behave_model import ValidationRule, ValidationIssue

class MyRule(ValidationRule):
    name = "my_rule"

    def check(self, project):
        issues = []
        # ... check logic ...
        return issues

Properties¶

Property	Type	Description
`name`	`str`	Rule name (shown in issues) — snake_case by convention

Severity is not declared on the rule — it is set per ValidationIssue when creating the issue.

Methods¶

Method	Returns	Description
`check(project)`	`list[ValidationIssue]`	Run the rule and return issues

ValidationIssue¶

A single validation finding.

Properties¶

Property	Type	Description
`rule`	`str`	Name of the rule that found the issue
`message`	`str`	Human-readable description
`severity`	`str`	`"error"` or `"warning"`
`location`	`str`	Source location string (e.g. `"file.feature:12"`), or `""`

Built-in rules¶

DuplicateScenarioNamesRule¶

Scenarios within a feature must have unique names (case-insensitive; includes scenarios inside Rules).

Property	Value
`name`	`"duplicate_scenario_names"`
`severity`	`"error"`

DuplicateFeatureNamesRule¶

Features must have unique names.

Property	Value
`name`	`"duplicate_feature_names"`
`severity`	`"error"`

EmptyScenarioRule¶

Scenarios should have at least one step (includes scenarios inside Rules).

Property	Value
`name`	`"empty_scenario"`
`severity`	`"warning"`

EmptyFeatureRule¶

Features should have at least one scenario (scenarios inside Rules count).

Property	Value
`name`	`"empty_feature"`
`severity`	`"warning"`

InvalidTableRule¶

Data tables must have consistent column counts across all rows (includes tables in rules, backgrounds, and Examples).

Property	Value
`name`	`"invalid_table"`
`severity`	`"error"`