Behavior change of $ref resolution

[jorcasso]

In our system we support some well known URNs that our clients can use in their schema definitions, using the $ref keyword, for example:

{
    "properties": {
        "someField": {
            "$ref": "urn:my-company:my-custom-type"
        }
    }
}

We use a custom URNFactory and works great.

But we have observed the way of the URN resolution has changed as of release 1.0.49. Previously, if a schema contained an unknown URN the call to JsonSchemaFactory.getSchema(...) failed with a JsonSchemaException. Now it does not fail in that moment but later, when calling to JsonSchema.validate(...). I suspect this change could be due to #377.

Is is possible to recover the old behavior and resolve the $ref keywords when getting the schema? that way we would ensure the schema instantiated is valid, or at least would it be possible to provide a way to load the $ref schemas eagerly after getting the schema instance?

[stevehu]

@jorcasso This is a dilemma we are facing. The #377 fixed a defect for parallel processing with lazy loading. The only option I can think of is to create a configuration flag. By default, it should be lazy loading; however, with the parallel processing flag is false, we can eagerly load the schemas. I didn't read the code but I am guessing we can also fix the loading with the synchronous keyword. I will leave it to you to choose one of the above options. Thanks.

[flozano]

IMHO having a flag for keeping previous behaviour would be enough. Eventually if someone can figure out a better fix for initialize() that allows parallelization, that would be better, but a flag seems immediately easier?

[stevehu]

@flozano I agree with you. Option 1 would be much simpler to implement.

[FWiesner]

Is somebody actively working on this? It is affecting us as well and I could take a look into the implementation if nobody already has done work

[flozano]

We planned to, but haven't started working on this yet because of bandwidth constrains, sorry... reverted to older version for now instead