validate

The validate command checks your changelog and identifies potential Liquibase syntax errors that may cause the update command to fail.

Note: The validate command examines Liquibase syntax and behaviors related to Liquibase operations. It does not check SQL for correctness and does not anticipate database deployment errors resulting from malformed SQL.

Uses

Use the validate command to detect if there are any issues with a changelog before running the update command. Validation helps you avoid a partial update, where only some changesets are applied due to an error in your changelog file.

Use the validate command to ensure:

  • The XML, YAML, JSON, or formatted SQL is structured correctly

  • Referenced files can be found

  • Any attributes you specify in your changelog match the XSD

  • There are no duplicated id, author, and file combinations

  • There are no checksum errors

  • The DATABASECHANGELOG and DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK tables exist (if not, it creates them)

Warning: The validate command only looks for possible errors in the changelog. It does not check for possible errors that might result from applying the changes to a specific database.

Syntax

liquibase validate --changelog-file=example-changelog.xml

Command parameters

Attribute

Definition

Requirement

--changelog-file=<string>

The root changelog

Required

--url=<string>

The JDBC database connection URL. See Using JDBC URL in Liquibase.

Required

--default-catalog-name=<string>

Name of the default catalog to use for the database connection

Optional

--default-schema-name=<string>

Name of the default schema to use for the database connection. If defaultSchemaName is set, then objects do not have to be fully qualified. This means you can refer to just mytable instead of myschema.mytable.

Note: In the properties file and JAVA_OPTS only: in 4.18.0 and earlier, specify this parameter using the syntax defaultSchemaName. In 4.19.0 and later, use the syntax liquibase.command.defaultSchemaName.

Note: In Liquibase 4.12.0 and later, you can use mixed-case schema names if you set --preserve-schema-case to true. However, in Liquibase 4.12.0–4.22.0, the Liquibase validator still throws a DatabaseException error if you specify a mixed-case value of defaultSchemaName. In 4.23.0 and later, the Liquibase validator accepts any casing.

Optional

--driver=<string>

The JDBC driver class

Optional

--driver-properties-file=<string>

The JDBC driver properties file

Optional

--password=<string>

Password to connect to the target database.

Optional

-strict

Enforces rigid validation rules before running updates. Strict mode catches additional configuration issues that standard validation allows.

Optional

--username=<string>

Username to connect to the target database.

Optional

Output

No validation errors found. Liquibase command 'validate' was executed successfully.