Merge two Json Schemas

Question

I am new to JSON and JSON schema validation. I have the following schema to validate a single employee object: ``` { "$schema":"http://json-schema.org/draft-03/schema#", "title":"Employee Type Schema", "type":"object", "properties": { "EmployeeID": {"type": "integer","minimum": 101,"maximum": 901,"required":true}, "FirstName": {"type": "string","required":true}, "LastName": {"type": "string","required":true}, "JobTitle": {"type": "string"}, "PhoneNumber": {"type": "string","required":true}, "Email": {"type": "string","required":true}, "Address": { "type": "object", "properties": { "AddressLine": {"type": "string","required":true}, "City": {"type": "string","required":true}, "PostalCode": {"type": "string","required":true}, "StateProvinceName": {"type": "string","required":true} } }, "CountryRegionName": {"type": "string"} } } ``` and I have the following schema to validate an array of the same employee object: ``` { "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-03/schema#", "title": "Emplo…

Accepted Answer

(Note: this question was also asked on the JSON Schema Google Group, and this answer is adapted from there.)

With "`$ref`", you can have something like this for your array:

```
{
    "type": "array",
    "items": {"$ref": "/schemas/path/to/employee"}
}
```

If you want something to be an array or a single item, then you can use "`oneOf`":

```
{
    "oneOf": [
        {"$ref": "/schemas/path/to/employee"}, // the root schema, defining the object
        {
            "type": "array", // the array schema.
            "items": {"$ref": "/schemas/path/to/employee"}
        }
    ]
}
```

The original Google Groups answer also contains some advice on using `"definitions"` to organise schemas so all these variants can exist in the same file.

Merge two Json Schemas

Solution

Problem