Validating submissions locally

library(hubValidations)

Validating model output files with `validate_submission()`

While most hubs will have automated validation systems set up to check contributions during submission, hubValidations also provides functionality for validating files locally before submitting them.

For this, submitting teams can use validate_submission() to validate their model output files prior to submitting.

The function takes a relative path, relative to the model output directory, as argument file_path, performs a series of standard validation checks and returns their results in the form of a hub_validations S3 class object.

hub_path <- system.file("testhubs/simple", package = "hubValidations")

validate_submission(hub_path,
  file_path = "team1-goodmodel/2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv"
)
#> 
#> ── simple ────
#> 
#> ✔ [valid_config]: All hub config files are valid.
#> 
#> 
#> ── 2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv ────
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> ✔ [file_exists]: File exists at path
#>   model-output/team1-goodmodel/2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv.
#> ✔ [file_name]: File name "2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv" is valid.
#> ✔ [file_location]: File directory name matches `model_id` metadata in file
#>   name.
#> ✔ [round_id_valid]: `round_id` is valid.
#> ✔ [file_format]: File is accepted hub format.
#> ✔ [metadata_exists]: Metadata file exists at path
#>   model-metadata/team1-goodmodel.yaml.
#> ✔ [file_read]: File could be read successfully.
#> ✔ [valid_round_id_col]: `round_id_col` name is valid.
#> ✔ [unique_round_id]: `round_id` column "origin_date" contains a single, unique
#>   round ID value.
#> ✔ [match_round_id]: All `round_id_col` "origin_date" values match submission
#>   `round_id` from file name.
#> ✔ [colnames]: Column names are consistent with expected round task IDs and std
#>   column names.
#> ✔ [col_types]: Column data types match hub schema.
#> ✔ [valid_vals]: `tbl` contains valid values/value combinations.
#> ✔ [rows_unique]: All combinations of task ID
#>   column/`output_type`/`output_type_id` values are unique.
#> ✔ [req_vals]: Required task ID/output type/output type ID combinations all
#>   present.
#> ✔ [value_col_valid]: Values in column `value` all valid with respect to
#>   modeling task config.
#> ✔ [value_col_non_desc]: Values in `value` column are non-decreasing as
#>   output_type_ids increase for all unique task ID value/output type
#>   combinations of quantile or cdf output types.
#> ℹ [value_col_sum1]: No pmf output types to check for sum of 1. Check skipped.
#> ✖ [submission_time]: Submission time must be within accepted submission window
#>   for round.  Current time "2024-10-24 12:10:09 UTC" is outside window
#>   2022-10-02 EDT--2022-10-09 23:59:59 EDT.

For more details on the structure of <hub_validations> objects, including how to access more information on individual checks, see vignette("articles/hub-validations-class").

Validation early return

Some checks which are critical to downstream checks will cause validation to stop and return the results of the checks up to and including the critical check that failed early.

They generally return a <error/check_error> condition class object. Any problems identified will need to be resolved and the function re-run for validation to proceed further.

hub_path <- system.file("testhubs/simple", package = "hubValidations")

validate_submission(hub_path,
  file_path = "team1-goodmodel/2022-10-15-hub-baseline.csv"
)
#> 
#> ── simple ────
#> 
#> ✔ [valid_config]: All hub config files are valid.
#> 
#> 
#> ── 2022-10-15-hub-baseline.csv ────
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> ✔ [file_exists]: File exists at path
#>   model-output/team1-goodmodel/2022-10-15-hub-baseline.csv.
#> ✔ [file_name]: File name "2022-10-15-hub-baseline.csv" is valid.
#> ✖ [file_location]: File directory name must match `model_id` metadata in file
#>   name.  File should be submitted to directory "hub-baseline" not
#>   "team1-goodmodel"
#> ✔ [round_id_valid]: `round_id` is valid.
#> ✔ [file_format]: File is accepted hub format.
#> ✔ [metadata_exists]: Metadata file exists at path
#>   model-metadata/hub-baseline.yml.
#> ✔ [file_read]: File could be read successfully.
#> ✔ [valid_round_id_col]: `round_id_col` name is valid.
#> ✔ [unique_round_id]: `round_id` column "origin_date" contains a single, unique
#>   round ID value.
#> ⓧ [match_round_id]: All `round_id_col` "origin_date" values must match
#>   submission `round_id` from file name.  `round_id` value 2022-10-08 does not
#>   match submission `round_id` "2022-10-15"
#> ✖ [submission_time]: Submission time must be within accepted submission window
#>   for round.  Current time "2024-10-24 12:10:11 UTC" is outside window
#>   2022-10-02 EDT--2022-10-09 23:59:59 EDT.

Execution Errors

If an execution error occurs in any of the checks, an <error/check_exec_error> is returned instead. For validation purposes, this results in the same downstream effects as an <error/check_error> object.

Checking for errors with `check_for_errors()`

You can check whether your file will overall pass validation checks by passing the hub_validations object to check_for_errors().

If validation fails, an error will be thrown and the failing checks will be summarised.

validate_submission(hub_path,
  file_path = "team1-goodmodel/2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv"
) %>%
  check_for_errors()
#> 
#> ── 2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv ────
#> 
#> ✖ [submission_time]: Submission time must be within accepted submission window
#>   for round.  Current time "2024-10-24 12:10:12 UTC" is outside window
#>   2022-10-02 EDT--2022-10-09 23:59:59 EDT.
#> Error in `check_for_errors()`:
#> ! 
#> The validation checks produced some failures/errors reported above.

Skipping the submission window check

If you are preparing your submission prior to the submission window opening, you might want to skip the submission window check. You can so by setting argument skip_submit_window_check to TRUE.

This results in the previous valid file (except for failing the validation window check) now passing overall validation.

validate_submission(hub_path,
  file_path = "team1-goodmodel/2022-10-08-team1-goodmodel.csv",
  skip_submit_window_check = TRUE
) %>%
  check_for_errors()
#> ✔ All validation checks have been successful.

Ignoring derived task IDs to improve validation performance

Argument derived_task_ids allows for the specification of task IDs that are derived from other task IDs to be ignored, which can often lead to a significant improvement in validation performance.

What are derived task IDs?

Derived task IDs are a class of task ID whose values depend on the values of other task IDs. As such, the validity of derived task ID values is dependent on the values of the task IDs they are derived from and the validity of value combinations of derived and other task IDs is much more restricted. A common example of a derived task ID is target_end_date which is most often derived from the reference_date or origin_date and horizon task ids.

Implications of derived task IDs on validation performance

With standard validation, derived task IDs like target_end_date tend to pollute the expanded grid used to validate valid value combination with invalid combinations. That’s because, while a given combination of reference_date and horizon values will only have a single valid target_end_date value, the target_end_date property in the config will contain all possible valid values for all combinations of reference_date and horizon. Because its the values in the config used to create the expanded valid values grid, the sizes these grids can reach as function of config complexity can often put excessive strain on the system’s memory, affecting overall performance of submission validation.

How to ignore derived task IDs

Supplying the names of derived task IDs to argument derived_task_ids will ignore them during validation checks and, depending on config complexity, this can lead to a significant improvement in validation performance.

`validate_submission` check details

Details of checks performed by `validate_submission()`
Name	Check	Early return	Fail output	Extra info
valid_config	Hub config valid	TRUE	check_error
submission_time	Current time within file submission window	FALSE	check_failure
file_exists	File exists at `file_path` provided	TRUE	check_error
file_name	File name valid	TRUE	check_error
file_location	File located in correct team directory	FALSE	check_failure
round_id_valid	File round ID is valid hub round IDs	TRUE	check_error
file_format	File format is accepted hub/round format	TRUE	check_error
metadata_exists	Model metadata file exists in expected location	TRUE	check_error
file_read	File can be read without errors	TRUE	check_error
valid_round_id_col	Round ID var from config exists in data column names. Skipped if `round_id_from_var` is FALSE in config.	FALSE	check_failure
unique_round_id	Round ID column contains a single unique round ID. Skipped if `round_id_from_var` is FALSE in config.	TRUE	check_error
match_round_id	Round ID from file contents matches round ID from file name. Skipped if `round_id_from_var` is FALSE in config.	TRUE	check_error
colnames	File column names match expected column names for round (i.e. task ID names + hub standard column names)	TRUE	check_error
col_types	File column types match expected column types from config. Mainly applicable to parquet & arrow files.	FALSE	check_failure
valid_vals	Columns (excluding `value` column) contain valid combinations of task ID / output type / output type ID values	TRUE	check_error	error_tbl: table of invalid task ID/output type/output type ID value combinations
rows_unique	Columns (excluding `value` column) contain unique combinations of task ID / output type / output type ID values	FALSE	check_failure
req_vals	Columns (excluding `value` column) contain all required combinations of task ID / output type / output type ID values	FALSE	check_failure	missing_df: table of missing task ID/output type/output type ID value combinations
value_col_valid	Values in `value` column are coercible to data type configured for each output type	FALSE	check_failure
value_col_non_desc	Values in `value` column are non-decreasing as output_type_ids increase for all unique task ID /output type value combinations. Applies to `quantile` or `cdf` output types only	FALSE	check_failure	error_tbl: table of rows affected
value_col_sum1	Values in the `value` column of `pmf` output type data for each unique task ID combination sum to 1.	FALSE	check_failure	error_tbl: table of rows affected
spl_compound_taskid_set	Sample compound task id sets for each modeling task match or are coarser than the expected set defined in tasks.json config.	TRUE	check_error	errors: list containing item for each failing modeling task. Exact structure dependent on type of validation failure. See check function documentation for more details.
spl_compound_tid	Samples contain single unique values for each compound task ID within individual samples (v3 and above schema only).	TRUE	check_error	errors: list containing item for each sample failing validation with breakdown of unique values for each compound task ID.
spl_non_compound_tid	Samples contain single unique combination of non-compound task ID values across all samples (v3 and above schema only).	TRUE	check_error	errors: list containing item for each modeling task with vectors of output type ids of samples failing validation and example table of most frequent non-compound task ID value combination across all samples in the modeling task.
spl_n	Number of samples for a given compound idx falls within accepted compound task range (v3 and above schema only).	FALSE	check_failure	errors: list containing item for each compound_idx failing validation with sample count, metadata on expected samples and example table of expected structure for samples belonging to the compound idx in question.

Validating model metadata files with `validate_model_metadata()`

If you want to check a model metadata file before submitting, you can similarly use function validate_model_metadata().

The function takes model metadata file name as argument file_path, performs a series of validation checks and returns their results in the form of a hub_validations S3 class object.

validate_model_metadata(hub_path,
  file_path = "hub-baseline.yml"
)
#> 
#> ── model-metadata-schema.json ────
#> 
#> ✔ [metadata_schema_exists]: File exists at path
#>   hub-config/model-metadata-schema.json.
#> 
#> 
#> ── hub-baseline.yml ────
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> ✔ [metadata_file_exists]: File exists at path model-metadata/hub-baseline.yml.
#> ✔ [metadata_file_ext]: Metadata file extension is "yml" or "yaml".
#> ✔ [metadata_file_location]: Metadata file directory name matches
#>   "model-metadata".
#> ✔ [metadata_matches_schema]: Metadata file contents are consistent with schema
#>   specifications.
#> ✔ [metadata_file_name]: Metadata file name matches the `model_id` specified
#>   within the metadata file.

validate_model_metadata(hub_path,
  file_path = "team1-goodmodel.yaml"
)
#> 
#> ── model-metadata-schema.json ────
#> 
#> ✔ [metadata_schema_exists]: File exists at path
#>   hub-config/model-metadata-schema.json.
#> ── team1-goodmodel.yaml ────
#> 
#> ✔ [metadata_file_exists]: File exists at path
#>   model-metadata/team1-goodmodel.yaml.
#> ✔ [metadata_file_ext]: Metadata file extension is "yml" or "yaml".
#> ✔ [metadata_file_location]: Metadata file directory name matches
#>   "model-metadata".
#> ⓧ [metadata_matches_schema]: Metadata file contents must be consistent with
#>   schema specifications.  - must have required property 'model_details' . -
#>   must NOT have additional properties; saw unexpected property
#>   'models_details'. - must NOT have additional properties; saw unexpected
#>   property 'ensemble_of_hub_models"'. - /include_ensemble must be boolean .

For more details on the structure of <hub_validations> objects, including how to access more information on individual checks, see vignette("articles/hub-validations-class").

`validate_model_metadata` check details

Details of checks performed by `validate_model_metadata()`
Name	Check	Early return	Fail output
metadata_schema_exists	A model metadata schema file exists in `hub-config` directory.	TRUE	check_error
metadata_file_exists	A file with name provided to argument `file_path` exists at the expected location (the `model-metadata` directory).	TRUE	check_error
metadata_file_ext	The metadata file has correct extension (yaml or yml).	TRUE	check_error
metadata_file_location	The metadata file has been saved to correct location.	TRUE	check_failure
metadata_matches_schema	The contents of the metadata file match the hub’s model metadata schema	TRUE	check_error
metadata_file_name	The metadata filename matches the model ID specified in the contents of the file.	TRUE	check_error

Custom checks

The standard checks discussed here are the checks deployed by default by the validate_submission or validate_model_metadata functions. For more information on deploying optional/custom functions or functions that require configuration please check the article on including custom functions (vignette("articles/deploying-custom-functions")).

Validating model output files with validate_submission()