election_results_xml_validator is a script that checks if an election data feed follows best practices and outputs errors, warnings and info messages for common issues

This is not an official Google product.

INSTALLATION

The package is available from PyPi and can be installed using the command below.

pip install election_results_xml_validator

election_results_xml_validator relies on lxml which will be installed if it isn't already installed. You may need to install libxslt development libraries in order to build lxml.

USAGE

List rules

You can list the validation rules that the script contains and the description of each rule by running the following command

election_results_xml_validator list

Validate a file

The validate command has 2 required arguments:

• the election file to be validated
• the XSD file to validate against

The command to validate the election file against all the rules in the file is

election_results_xml_validator validate election_file.xml --xsd election_data_spec.xsd OR election_results_xml_validator validate election_file.xml -x election_data_spec.xsd

One can choose to only validate one or more comma separated rules by using the -i flag

election_results_xml_validator validate election_file.xml --xsd election_data_spec.xsd -i Schema

Or choose to exclude one or more comma separated rules using the -e flag

election_results_xml_validator validate election_file.xml --xsd election_data_spec.xsd -e Schema

By default, the script only shows a summary of issues found. You can get a verbose report by adding the -v flag

election_results_xml_validator validate election_file.xml --xsd election_data_spec.xsd -v