gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/api/lint.md

stage	group	info
Verify	Continuous Integration	To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#designated-technical-writers

CI Lint API

Validate the CI YAML config

Introduced in GitLab 8.12.

Checks if CI/CD YAML configuration is valid. This endpoint validates basic CI/CD configuration syntax. It doesn't have any namespace specific context.

POST /ci/lint

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
content	string	yes	The CI/CD configuration content.
include_merged_yaml	boolean	no	If the expanded CI/CD configuration should be included in the response.

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/ci/lint" --data '{"content": "{ \"image\": \"ruby:2.6\", \"services\": [\"postgres\"], \"before_script\": [\"bundle install\", \"bundle exec rake db:create\"], \"variables\": {\"DB_NAME\": \"postgres\"}, \"types\": [\"test\", \"deploy\", \"notify\"], \"rspec\": { \"script\": \"rake spec\", \"tags\": [\"ruby\", \"postgres\"], \"only\": [\"branches\"]}}"}'

Be sure to paste the exact contents of your GitLab CI/CD YAML config because YAML is very sensitive about indentation and spacing.

Example responses:

• Valid content:

  {
    "status": "valid",
    "errors": []
  }
  

• Invalid content:

  {
    "status": "invalid",
    "errors": [
      "variables config should be a hash of key value pairs"
    ]
  }
  

• Without the content attribute:

  {
    "error": "content is missing"
  }
  

YAML expansion

The expansion only works for CI configurations that don't have local includes.

Example contents of a .gitlab-ci.yml passed to the CI Lint API with include_merged_yaml set as true:

include:
  remote: 'https://example.com/remote.yaml'

test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - echo 1

Example contents of https://example.com/remote.yaml:

another_test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - echo 2

Example response:

{
  "status": "valid",
  "errors": [],
  "merged_config": "---\n:another_test:\n  :stage: test\n  :script: echo 2\n:test:\n  :stage: test\n  :script: echo 1\n"
}