ignition-lint

A comprehensive linting toolkit for Ignition SCADA projects that catches errors before runtime, enforces best practices, and maintains code quality across your industrial automation systems.

This project extends the foundational work by Eric Knorr in ia-eknorr/ignition-lint, which pioneered naming convention validation for Ignition view.json files. See credits for the full story.

Why ignition-lint?

Catch errors before they reach runtime

• Detect Jython syntax errors in onChange scripts and bindings
• Find malformed expression bindings and property references
• Validate against production-tested JSON schemas

Maintain consistent standards across teams

• Enforce naming conventions for components, parameters, and properties
• Flag deprecated API usage (print statements, .iteritems(), xrange())
• Identify code smells like hardcoded URLs and overridden system variables

Improve performance and maintainability

• Detect now() expressions with inefficient polling intervals
• Find unreferenced custom properties and parameters
• Warn about fragile component traversal (getSibling(), getChild())

Integrate everywhere

• GitHub Actions for automated PR checks
• Pre-commit hooks for local validation
• CLI for CI/CD pipelines
• MCP server for AI-assisted development

Installation

pip install ignition-lint-toolkit

Or with uv:

uv pip install ignition-lint-toolkit

Verify the install:

ignition-lint --help

Optional: MCP server support

pip install "ignition-lint-toolkit[mcp]"

Quick start

Install

pip install ignition-lint-toolkit

Lint your first project

# Lint any directory - finds all view.json and .py files
ignition-lint --target /path/to/your/project

# Or lint a full Ignition project (standard layout)
ignition-lint --project /path/to/ignition/project --profile full

See what it catches

# Example output:
ERROR: JYTHON_SYNTAX_ERROR in MyView/view.json:45
  Syntax error in onChange script: unexpected indent

WARNING: EXPR_NOW_DEFAULT_POLLING in Dashboard/view.json:12
  now() defaults to 1000ms polling - specify explicit interval: now(5000)

WARNING: NAMING_COMPONENT in Home/view.json:8
  Component 'Label' should use PascalCase: 'StatusLabel'

INFO: UNUSED_CUSTOM_PROPERTY in Settings/view.json:23
  Custom property 'debugMode' is defined but never referenced

Common use cases

# Pre-deployment validation
ignition-lint --project ./production --fail-on error

# Focus on one component type
ignition-lint -t ./views --component ia.display.label

# JSON output for CI/CD pipelines
ignition-lint -t ./project --report-format json > lint-report.json

# Suppress rules during gradual adoption
ignition-lint -t ./legacy --ignore-codes NAMING_PARAMETER,MISSING_DOCSTRING

What it checks

Category	Examples
Perspective schema	Component structure, binding types, transform validity, missing props
Expressions	now() polling intervals, unknown functions, malformed property refs, fragile component traversal
Naming conventions	Component, parameter, and custom property naming (PascalCase, camelCase, snake_case, or custom regex)
Jython inline scripts	Syntax errors, indentation, print statements, hardcoded URLs, missing error handling
Standalone scripts	Python syntax, docstrings, deprecated APIs, system overrides, line length
Unused properties	Unreferenced custom and params properties per view

Severity levels

Level	Meaning
ERROR	Critical issues that cause runtime failures
WARNING	Compatibility or best practice issues
INFO	Informational insights and suggestions
STYLE	Code style and documentation improvements

Lint suppression

Three mechanisms let you control which rules fire and where:

1. --ignore-codes flag -- suppress rules globally for an entire run
2. .ignition-lintignore file -- gitignore-style patterns with optional rule scoping per path
3. Inline comments -- # ignition-lint: disable=CODE directives in Python scripts

See the suppression guide for the full reference.

Integrations

🔄 GitHub Actions

Automatically lint PRs and commits. Add to .github/workflows/ignition-lint.yml:

name: Ignition Lint
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: TheThoughtagen/ignition-lint@v1
        with:
          project_path: .
          lint_type: all
          fail_on: error
          ignore_codes: "NAMING_PARAMETER"  # Suppress during migration

Full Action documentation →

🪝 Pre-commit hooks

Catch issues before they're committed:

# .pre-commit-config.yaml
repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/TheThoughtagen/ignition-lint
    rev: v1
    hooks:
      - id: ignition-perspective-lint

Pre-commit guide →

🤖 MCP server (AI agents)

Enable AI assistants like Claude to lint your Ignition projects:

pip install "ignition-lint-toolkit[mcp]"
ignition-lint-server

MCP integration guide →

🛠️ Editor integration

VS Code / ignition-nvim

Use with language servers for real-time feedback. See Editor Integration Guide for setup with:

• VS Code with JSON schema validation
• Neovim with ignition-nvim
• LSP-compatible editors

Tooling overview

Command	Purpose
ignition-lint	CLI entry point for project and file linting
ignition-lint-server	FastMCP server for AI agent integrations
ignition-lint-action	Wrapper used by the GitHub Action

Documentation

Full documentation at TheThoughtagen.github.io/ignition-lint:

• Installation
• Basic usage
• CLI reference
• Rule codes
• Suppression guide
• GitHub Actions

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, project structure, and guidelines.

License

MIT © 2025 Patrick Mannion