What's the best method to automate the validation
of HTML (and CSS)?
In 2001, someone mentioned hooking up to W3's validation
service, http://validator.w3.org/, but my lame search
abilities have failed to find anything more...
Thanks,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
Hi!
What's the best method to automate the validation
of HTML (and CSS)?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'automate' (are you looking for some RPC
service to call upon?), but http://validator.w3.org/ does have an
online validator service.
I.e., following a link like
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.metafilter.com
leads to a page containing validation results for metafilter.com. You
can also use
http://validator.w3.org/check/referer
to fetch and validate the referring page.
HTH
-Shajith
On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 21:06:54 +0900, Bil Kleb <Bil.Kleb@nasa.gov> wrote:
Bil Kleb wrote:
What's the best method to automate the validation
of HTML (and CSS)?In 2001, someone mentioned hooking up to W3's validation
service, http://validator.w3.org/, but my lame search
abilities have failed to find anything more...
I don't have any suggestions for CSS (though I believe their are Web-based validators out there someplace), but for local validation I sometimes use RXP.
It's a fast validating XML parser, written in C, that runs on a variety of platforms. I like it because there is a Windows version, and I can quickly check an XML file against a DTD.
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/rxp.html
It's not automated, though running it via backticks and grepping the output should be easy. Writing a proper Ruby binding shouldn't be too hard either; hell, there's a Python binding, so there can't be anything too tricky.
Of course, I say this while not planning to do it myself.
James
Thanks,
CT wrote:
Hi!
Hello.
Bil Kleb wrote:
What's the best method to automate the validation
of HTML (and CSS)?I'm not sure what you mean by 'automate'
Here's my scenario: I work on some RHTMLs and run some
ERB Ruby to get some HTMLs. Then I "publish", i.e.,
upload to the webserver.
I'd like this RHTML -> HTML Ruby code to also report on
the validity of the generated HTMLs via something like
W3's validation service, /before/ I publish them.
I'd really like to do the validation without requiring
a network connection but for now, I'd be happy just
automating the validation process.
Regards,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
CT wrote:
I.e., following a link like http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.metafilter.com
leads to a page containing validation results for metafilter.com.
Ah. If I can figure out how to send a file to their
file upload interface,
The W3C Markup Validation Service
without manually using the form, I'd be in business.
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
James Britt wrote:
I don't have any suggestions for CSS (though I believe their are Web-based validators out there someplace), but for local validation I sometimes use RXP. [..]
Hmm. Thanks, I'll take a look.
Regards,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> writes:
Bil Kleb wrote:
What's the best method to automate the validation
of HTML (and CSS)?
In 2001, someone mentioned hooking up to W3's validation
service, http://validator.w3.org/, but my lame search
abilities have failed to find anything more...I don't have any suggestions for CSS (though I believe their are
Web-based validators out there someplace), but for local validation I
sometimes use RXP.It's a fast validating XML parser, written in C, that runs on a
variety of platforms. I like it because there is a Windows version,
and I can quickly check an XML file against a DTD.
I'll throw RNV <http://davidashen.net/rnv.html> in, which is a small
and fast RELAX NG validator I've been using to check my XHTML
documents. It also includes RVP, an XML validator that can
be easily used over a pipe. (Haven't looked further into that.)
Christian Neukirchen
<chneukirchen@gmail.com>
You can do this with cURL (man curl), and I suppose one of the Ruby cURL bindings.
- Sam
Bil Kleb wrote:
CT wrote:
I.e., following a link like http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.metafilter.com
leads to a page containing validation results for metafilter.com.Ah. If I can figure out how to send a file to their
file upload interface,The W3C Markup Validation Service
without manually using the form, I'd be in business.
Bil Kleb wrote:
James Britt wrote:
I don't have any suggestions for CSS (though I believe their are Web-based validators out there someplace), but for local validation I sometimes use RXP. [..]
Hmm. Thanks, I'll take a look.
After corresponding with RXP's author, this is what I
am currently using to validate my HTML without a network
connection:
htmlfiles.each do |file|
result = `rxp -sD html file://html-v4.01-strict.dtd #{file} 2>&1`
$stderr.puts result if result.empty?
end
Note: the lame '2>&1' hack to capture standard error.
To be more general, I'd remove the -D mess and make a XML
catalog of local DTDs and point to it with the XML_CATALOG_FILES
environment variable. An example catalog is available at
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/example-catalog.xml
Regards,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
Sam Goldman wrote:
You can do this with cURL (man curl), and I suppose one of the Ruby cURL bindings.
Actually /I/ can't. I lack the knowledge and apparently, the ability
to learn how to do this -- mostly due to the requirement to change the
form encoding type to handle the file upload part...
Regards,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
I personally like:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/
Be sure to check the "Validate entire site" option.
--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com
John W. Long wrote:
I personally like:
Thanks for the tip, I hadn't found that one in
my prior searches.
But my twist is that I would like to automate the
validation check /before/ publishing the pages
to a webserver.
Right now I have to manually use one of the file
upload validators interfaces such as,
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/upload.html
The W3C Markup Validation Service
because I'm reluctant to install W3's source due
to it's large dependency chain and I'm too stupid
to figure out how to automate the interaction
with these file upload interfaces.
From looking at their form source and reading a bit
about file upload forms, I gather that I have to send
a form with enctype="multipart/form-data", but it
is unclear just how to do this.
Regards,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
Bil Kleb wrote:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/upload.html
The W3C Markup Validation Servicebecause I'm reluctant to install W3's source due
to it's large dependency chain and I'm too stupid
to figure out how to automate the interaction
with these file upload interfaces.From looking at their form source and reading a bit
about file upload forms, I gather that I have to send
a form with enctype="multipart/form-data", but it
is unclear just how to do this.
Your request should be something like this (not tested):
# let's say that what you write to stdout goes to the server
# ('validator-page' is the path that appears in the 'action'
# attribute of the <form>
separator = "----------------------86428764287643287642"
print "POST /validator-page HTTP/1.1\r\n"
# you first send a header for your request
print "Host: www.example.org\r\n" # the server, probably www.htmlhelp.com
print "User-Agent: RubyValidator/1.0 :)\r\n"
print "Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=", separator, "\r\n"
print "\r\n"
# and then goes every form field, prefixed by separator and a header
print separator, "\r\n"
print "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"fieldname\"\r\n" # the name in the form field
print "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\r\n" # for almost every field type
print "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8 bit\r\n"
print "\r\n"
print "These are the contents of the text field.\r\n"
# for a file upload, the headers change slightly
print separator, "\r\n"
print "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"fieldname\"" # the name in the form field
print "; filename=\"file-name.html\"\r\n" # ..and in this case the filename
print "Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n" # the content type also changes...
# ...but I guess you can put "text/html; charset=..." as well
print "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8 bit\r\n" # or whatever
print "\r\n"
print your_file_in_a_string
print "\r\n"
# you finalize your request with the separator plus two dashes
print separator, "--\r\n"
A tip: create a simple webrick servlet that only outputs its request. Then copy any form you want to automate to your local machine, and change its "action" attribute to point to your servlet. Then you'll know exactly what you need to send.
Good luck.
Bil Kleb wrote:
John W. Long wrote:
I personally like:
Thanks for the tip, I hadn't found that one in
my prior searches.But my twist is that I would like to automate the
validation check /before/ publishing the pages
to a webserver.
Why not publish them to a development server listening on a different port? For example:
It could really simplify things for you.
--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com
John W. Long wrote:
Bil Kleb wrote:
Thanks for the tip, I hadn't found that one in
my prior searches.But my twist is that I would like to automate the
validation check /before/ publishing the pages
to a webserver.Why not publish them to a development server listening on a different port? For example:
It could really simplify things for you.
The other twist: I'd like to do the validation without
the need for a network connect as I find myself working
offline more and more of late.
Truth be told: I just want the world! 
Regards,
--
Bil Kleb, Hampton, Virginia
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov
Bil Kleb wrote:
John W. Long wrote:
Why not publish them to a development server listening on a different port? For example:
It could really simplify things for you.
The other twist: I'd like to do the validation without
the need for a network connect as I find myself working
offline more and more of late.Truth be told: I just want the world!
Might be available. xmllint + xmlcatalog (both part of the libxml2 library from xmlsoft.org) allows one to validate against a local DTD without having to munge XML files that already contain a DOCTYPE declaration.
The XML catalog lets you map a public identifier (e.g. "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN") to a (typically local) resource, such that when xmllint encounters a file containing
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
it knows to go fetch some local disk file with the DTD (assuming, of course, you've actually arranged for a copy to be available).
I've on;y recently looked at this, so if anyone has some actual practical experience with this, please speak up. But it is relatively simple to run from the command line, and avoids the need to running extra servers or publishing to stealth sites or munging the source XML.
(Most of the examples I've seen deal with DocBook, where authors want to validate, and want their source XML to point to the canonical DTD location, but do not want to make a network call on each pass; the XML catalog is quite the cat's meow.)
Thanks,
James
I read about these tools in the Vim as XML Editor HowTo:
It's an interesting read- there is probably more bash, ruby and xml
tools (such as xmllint) then there are vi-specific items.
On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 14:00:57 +0900, James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:
Bil Kleb wrote:
> John W. Long wrote:
>>
>> Why not publish them to a development server listening on a different
>> port? For example:
>>
>> http://dev.mywebsite.com:90/
>>
>> It could really simplify things for you.
>
>
> The other twist: I'd like to do the validation without
> the need for a network connect as I find myself working
> offline more and more of late.
>
> Truth be told: I just want the world!Might be available. xmllint + xmlcatalog (both part of the libxml2
library from xmlsoft.org) allows one to validate against a local DTD
without having to munge XML files that already contain a DOCTYPE
declaration.The XML catalog lets you map a public identifier (e.g. "-//W3C//DTD
XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN") to a (typically local) resource, such that when
xmllint encounters a file containing<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">it knows to go fetch some local disk file with the DTD (assuming, of
course, you've actually arranged for a copy to be available).I've on;y recently looked at this, so if anyone has some actual
practical experience with this, please speak up. But it is relatively
simple to run from the command line, and avoids the need to running
extra servers or publishing to stealth sites or munging the source XML.(Most of the examples I've seen deal with DocBook, where authors want to
validate, and want their source XML to point to the canonical DTD
location, but do not want to make a network call on each pass; the XML
catalog is quite the cat's meow.)Thanks,
James
--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg