[Bug]: Required properties of NWB schemas are not marked as required in MatNWB

[ehennestad]

What happened?

Properties originating from Attributes in the NWB specification schemas are not marked as required by MatNWB, even though they are required by the schemas.

This was discovered in issue #650

@bendichter It is not obvious to me from the NWB Specification Language, but are Link properties always required?

Steps to Reproduce

types.core.ProcessingModule() % does not issue a warning that description (required) is missing.

Error Message

Operating System

macOS

Matlab Version

2023b

Code of Conduct

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[ehennestad]

It is not obvious to me from the NWB Specification Language, but are Link properties always required?

Found this: https://schema-language.readthedocs.io/en/latest/description.html#quantity

[bendichter]

@bendichter It is not obvious to me from the NWB Specification Language, but are Link properties always required?

@ehennestad yes, this is a bit obscure, esp. since this deviates from the json-schema convention that attributes are optional by default, but they are required by default in NWB:

1.6.1.8. attribute::required
Optional boolean key describing whether the attribute is required. Default value is True.

https://schema-language.readthedocs.io/en/latest/description.html#id8

[bendichter]

attributes using the "required" field and links and datasets use the "quantity" field. They are all mandatory by default