Adamant is a JSON schema-based metadata creation tool presented in a user-friendly interface. Adamant aims to ease the integration of various research data management (RDM) workflows into the everyday research routine of especially small independent laboratories, which hopefully leads to the generation of research data that adhere to the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles. As of now, Adamant supports the following features:

• Rendering of interactive web-form based on a valid JSON schema
• User-friendly editing process of the rendered web-form and the corresponding schema
• Creating a valid JSON schema and web-form from scratch
• Live validation for various field types
• Quick re-use of existing schemas from a list
• Downloadable JSON schema and its form data
• API-based integration as various form submission functionalities

A live demo of Adamant (client only) is available at: https://csihda.github.io/adamant/.

Accompanying article can be found at: https://f1000research.com/articles/11-475/v2, which includes the technical description of the tool and its main use cases.

Changelog

[1.3.0] June 30, 2025

Added (only available when deployed with a backend)

• Start dialog for selecting different use cases (see general conf src/general-conf.json to enable this)
• Browse-and-edit functionality for eLabFTW experiments created with Adamant
• Faux-login using a user-generated eLabFTW API token

Changed

• Backend api.py to support eLabFTW v5.2.0
• Location of toast messages is now on the bottom right
• Render schema workflow: removed the compile step and added "edit mode"

Removed

• HTML/description list representation of the form in the experiment body

Main use cases

Supported JSON schema keywords

Currently, Adamant supports the rendering and editing of JSON schemas with a specification version draft 4 and 7. The following table lists all the implemented JSON schema keywords in the current version of Adamant. Note that the id keyword only works with the JSON schema specification version draft 4, whereas $id is used for the newer specification drafts. Lastly, the contentEncoding keyword is intended to be used with the specification version draft 7 or newer.

Field Type	Implemented Keywords	Note
String	title, id, $id, description, type, enum, contentEncoding, default, minLength, maxLength	contentEncoding can only receive a string value of "base64"
Number	title, id, $id, description, type, enum, default, minimum, maximum
Integer	title, id, $id, description, type, enum, default, minimum, maximum
Boolean	title, id, $id, description, type, default
Array	title , id, $id, description, type, default, items, minItems, maxItems, uniqueItems
Object	title, id, $id, description, type, properties, required

Development

Known dependencies: Node.js v14.15.5 and Python 3.8. The rests are handled by package.json and backend/requirements.txt.

Setting up Adamant on a local machine for development:

• $ git clone https://github.com/csihda/adamant.git—clone the repository
• $ cd adamant—go to adamant project directory
• adamant$ npm install—install the dependencies for the client-side
• adamant$ cd backend—go to backend directory
• adamant/backend$ python -m venv venv—create a python virtual environment
• Windows: adamant/backend$ ./venv/Scripts/activate—activate the virtual environment
• Linux: adamant/backend$ source venv/bin/activate—activate the virtual environment
• adamant/backend$ pip install -r requirements.txt—install the dependencies for the back-end
• adamant/backend$ cd ..—go back to adamant project directory
• adamant$ yarn start-api—start the back-end
• adamant$ yarn start—on a new terminal, in the adamant project directory, start the front-end

By default, Adamant is accessible at http://localhost:3000.

Deployment

We recommend deploying Adamant with docker-compose, which can be done with ease:

• $ git clone https://github.com/csihda/adamant.git—clone the repository
• $ cd adamant—go to adamant project directory
• adamant$ docker−compose build—build the docker images for both back-end and front-end
• adamant$ docker−compose up -d—start both client and server containers, i.e., the whole system

By default, the deployed system can be accessed at http://localhost:3000.

Citation

Please cite this paper if you use this code/tool in your publication.

@article{ 10.12688/f1000research.110875.2,
author = {Chaerony Siffa, I and Schäfer, J and Becker, MM},
title = {Adamant: a JSON schema-based metadata editor for research data management workflows 
[version 2; peer review: 3 approved]},
journal = {F1000Research},
volume = {11},
year = {2022},
number = {475},
doi = {10.12688/f1000research.110875.2}
}

Grant information

The work was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the grant mark 16QK03A. The responsibility for the content of this repository lies with the authors.

To do's:

• Code refactoring
• Deprecate older specifications of JSON Schema (at least remove draft-4)
• Support newer specifications of JSON Schema (at least up to 2019-09)
• ...