Use Pydantic!

Pydantic enforces type hints at runtime, and provides user friendly errors when data is invalid. Define how data should be in pure, canonical python; validate it with pydantic, as simple as that:

Copyfrom pydantic import BaseModel


class Info(BaseModel):
    conf_one: float
    conf_two: str
    conf_three: bool

    class Config:
        extra = 'forbid'


class ConfStructure(BaseModel):
    version: int
    info: Info

If validation fails pydantic will raise an error with a breakdown of what was wrong:

Copymy_conf_wrong = {
    'version': 1,

    'info': {
        'conf_one': 2.5,
        'conf_two': 'foo',
        'conf_three': False,
        'optional_conf': 'bar'
    }
}

my_conf_right = {
    'version': 10,

    'info': {
        'conf_one': 14.5,
        'conf_two': 'something',
        'conf_three': False
    }
}

model = ConfStructure(**my_conf_right)
print(model.dict())
# {'version': 10, 'info': {'conf_one': 14.5, 'conf_two': 'something', 'conf_three': False}}

res = ConfStructure(**my_conf_wrong)
# pydantic.error_wrappers.ValidationError: 1 validation error for ConfStructure
#     info -> optional_conf
# extra fields not permitted (type=value_error.extra)