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://plasma-mds.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.

Warning

Please refrain from creating your schema with the draft-4 specification. It will be deprecated in one of future releases.

Changelog

[1.3.2] May 11, 2026

Fixed

• Critical security fixes.
• Migrated frontend build system to Vite for improved performance and security.
• Replaced file upload icon with text-based "UPLOAD INPUT DATA" button for better accessibility.
• Data persistence bug in NumberType and IntegerType where cleared fields were not removed from form state and hence old values were sent to the backend.
• Docker related files updated.

Minor changes

• Updated demo-schema.json and plasma-mds.json to draft-7 specification.

[1.3.1] December 17, 2025

Fixed

• Assign "Running" status to a new experiment created with Adamant
• Update experiment is fixed

Note

• Backend api.py works with eLabFTW v5.3.10

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 --legacy-peer-deps—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
• Create adamant/backend/temp-files directory
• adamant/backend$ pip install -r requirements.txt—install the dependencies for the back-end
• adamant/backend$ cd ..—go back to adamant project directory
• adamant$ npm run start-api—start the back-end
• adamant$ npm 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)
• ...