Glossary

cstruct: A data structure generated by the colander.SchemaNode.serialize method, capable of being consumed by the colander.SchemaNode.deserialize method.
appstruct: A raw application data structure (a structure of complex Python objects), passed to the colander.SchemaNode.serialize method for serialization. The colander.SchemaNode.deserialize method accepts a cstruct and returns an appstruct.
schema: A nested collection of schema node objects representing an arrangement of data.
schema node: A schema node is an object which can serialize an appstruct to a cstruct and deserialize a appstruct from a cstruct an (object derived from colander.SchemaNode or one of the colander Schema classes).
type: An object representing a particular type of data (mapping, boolean, string, etc) capable of serializing an appstruct and of deserializing a cstruct. Colander has various built-in types (colander.String, colander.Mapping, etc) and may be extended with additional types (see defining_a_new_type).
validator: A Colander validator callable. Accepts a node object and a value and either raises an colander.Invalid exception or returns None. Used as the validator= argument to a schema node, ensuring that the input meets the requirements of the schema. Built-in validators exist in Colander (e.g. colander.OneOf, colander.Range, etc), and new validators can be defined to extend Colander (see defining_a_new_validator).