Test your rendered HTML files to make sure they're accurate.
If you generate HTML files, then this tool might be for you!
HTMLProofer is a set of tests to validate your HTML output. These tests check if your image references are legitimate, if they have alt tags, if your internal links are working, and so on. It’s intended to be an all-in-one checker for your output.
In scope for this project is any well-known and widely-used test for HTML document quality. A major use for this project is continuous integration – so we must have reliable results. We usually balance correctness over performance. And, if necessary, we should be able to trace this program’s detection of HTML errors back to documented best practices or standards, such as W3 specifications.
Third-party modules. We want this product to be useful for continuous integration so we prefer to avoid subjective tests which are prone to false positive results, such as spell checkers, indentation checkers, etc. If you want to work on these items, please see the section on custom tests and consider adding an implementation as a third-party module.
Advanced configuration. Most front-end developers can test their HTML using our command line program. Advanced configuration will require using Ruby.
Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem 'html-proofer'
And then execute:
$ bundle install
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install html-proofer
NOTE: When installation speed matters, set NOKOGIRI_USE_SYSTEM_LIBRARIES to true in your environment. This is useful for increasing the speed of your Continuous Integration builds.
Below is a mostly comprehensive list of checks that HTMLProofer can perform.
img elements:
a, link elements:
#linkToMe) are workingscript elements:
You can configure HTMLProofer to run on:
It can also run through the command-line.
HTMLProofer on your output folder.proofer.run on that path.Here’s an example:
require "html-proofer"
require "html/pipeline"
require "find"
# make an out dir
Dir.mkdir("out") unless File.exist?("out")
pipeline = HTML::Pipeline.new([
HTML::Pipeline::MarkdownFilter,
HTML::Pipeline::TableOfContentsFilter,
],
gfm: true)
# iterate over files, and generate HTML from Markdown
Find.find("./docs") do |path|
next unless File.extname(path) == ".md"
contents = File.read(path)
result = pipeline.call(contents)
File.open("out/#{path.split("/").pop.sub(".md", ".html")}", "w") { |file| file.write(result[:output].to_s) }
end
# test your out dir!
HTMLProofer.check_directory("./out").run
If you simply want to check a single file, use the check_file method:
HTMLProofer.check_file("/path/to/a/file.html").run
If you want to check a directory, use check_directory:
HTMLProofer.check_directory("./out").run
If you want to check multiple directories, use check_directories:
HTMLProofer.check_directories(["./one", "./two"]).run
With check_links, you can also pass in an array of links:
HTMLProofer.check_links(["https://github.com", "https://jekyllrb.com"]).run
Sometimes, the information in your HTML is not the same as how your server serves content. In these cases, you can use swap_urls to map the URL in a file to the URL you’d like it to become. For example:
run_proofer(file, :file, swap_urls: { %r{^https//placeholder.com} => "https://website.com" })
In this case, any link that matches the ^https://placeholder.com will be converted to https://website.com.
A similar swapping process can be done for attributes:
run_proofer(file, :file, swap_attributes: { "img" => [["data-src", "src"]] })
In this case, we are telling HTMLProofer that, for any img tag detected, for any src attribute, pretend it’s actually the src attribute instead. Since the value is an array of arrays, you can pass in as many attribute swaps as you need for each element.
You’ll also get a new program called htmlproofer with this gem. Terrific!
Pass in options through the command-line as flags, like this:
htmlproofer --extensions .html.erb ./out
Use htmlproofer --help to see all command line options.
For options which require an array of input, surround the value with quotes, and don’t use
any spaces. For example, to exclude an array of HTTP status code, you might do:
htmlproofer --ignore-status-codes "999,401,404" ./out
For something like url-ignore, and other options that require an array of regular expressions,
you can pass in a syntax like this:
htmlproofer --ignore-urls "/www.github.com/,/foo.com/" ./out
Since swap_urls is a bit special, you’ll pass in a pair of RegEx:String
values. The escape sequences \: should be used to produce literal
:s htmlproofer will figure out what you mean.
htmlproofer --swap-urls "wow:cow,mow:doh" --extensions .html.erb --ignore-urls www.github.com ./out
Some configuration options, such as --typheous, --cache, or --swap-attributes, require well-formatted JSON.
baseurlIf your Jekyll site has a baseurl configured, you’ll need to adjust the
generated url validation to cope with that. The easiest way is using the
swap_urls option.
For a site.baseurl value of /BASEURL, here’s what that looks like on the
command line:
htmlproofer --assume-extension ./_site --swap-urls '^/BASEURL/:/'
or in your Rakefile
require "html-proofer"
task :test do
sh "bundle exec jekyll build"
options = { swap_urls: "^/BASEURL/:/" }
HTMLProofer.check_directory("./_site", options).run
end
If you have trouble with (or don’t want to) install Ruby/Nokogumbo, the command-line tool can be run through Docker. See klakegg/html-proofer for more information.
Add the data-proofer-ignore attribute to any tag to ignore it from every check.
<a href="https://notareallink" data-proofer-ignore>Not checked.</a>
This can also apply to parent elements, all the way up to the <html> tag:
<div data-proofer-ignore>
<a href="https://notareallink">Not checked because of parent.</a>
</div>
Say you’ve got some new files in a pull request, and your tests are failing because links to those files are not live yet. One thing you can do is run a diff against your base branch and explicitly ignore the new files, like this:
directories = ['content']
merge_base = %x(git merge-base origin/production HEAD).chomp
diffable_files = %x(git diff -z --name-only --diff-filter=AC #{merge_base}).split("\0")
diffable_files = diffable_files.select do |filename|
next true if directories.include?(File.dirname(filename))
filename.end_with?(".md")
end.map { |f| Regexp.new(File.basename(f, File.extname(f))) }
HTMLProofer.check_directory("./output", { ignore_urls: diffable_files }).run
The HTMLProofer constructor takes an optional hash of additional options:
| Option | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
allow_hash_href |
If true, assumes href="#" anchors are valid |
true |
allow_missing_href |
If true, does not flag a tags missing href. In HTML5, this is technically allowed, but could also be human error. |
false |
assume_extension |
Automatically add specified extension to files for internal links, to allow extensionless URLs (as supported by most servers) | .html |
checks |
An array of Strings indicating which checks you want to run | ['Links', 'Images', 'Scripts'] |
check_external_hash |
Checks whether external hashes exist (even if the webpage exists) | true |
check_internal_hash |
Checks whether internal hashes exist (even if the webpage exists) | true |
check_sri |
Check that <link> and <script> external resources use SRI |
false |
directory_index_file |
Sets the file to look for when a link refers to a directory. | index.html |
disable_external |
If true, does not run the external link checker |
false |
enforce_https |
Fails a link if it’s not marked as https. |
true |
extensions |
An array of Strings indicating the file extensions you would like to check (including the dot) | ['.html'] |
ignore_empty_alt |
If true, ignores images with empty/missing alt tags (in other words, <img alt> and <img alt=""> are valid; set this to false to flag those) |
true |
ignore_files |
An array of Strings or RegExps containing file paths that are safe to ignore. | [] |
ignore_empty_mailto |
If true, allows mailto: hrefs which do not contain an email address. |
false |
ignore_missing_alt |
If true, ignores images with missing alt tags |
false |
ignore_status_codes |
An array of numbers representing status codes to ignore. | [] |
ignore_urls |
An array of Strings or RegExps containing URLs that are safe to ignore. This affects all HTML attributes, such as alt tags on images. |
[] |
log_level |
Sets the logging level, as determined by Yell. One of :debug, :info, :warn, :error, or :fatal. |
:info |
only_4xx |
Only reports errors for links that fall within the 4xx status code range. | false |
root_dir |
The absolute path to the directory serving your html-files. | “” |
swap_attributes |
JSON-formatted config that maps element names to the preferred attribute to check | {} |
swap_urls |
A hash containing key-value pairs of RegExp => String. It transforms URLs that match RegExp into String via gsub. |
{} |
In addition, there are a few “namespaced” options. These are:
:typhoeus / :hydra:cacheTyphoeus is used to make fast, parallel requests to external URLs. You can pass in any of Typhoeus’ options for the external link checks with the options namespace of :typhoeus. For example:
HTMLProofer.new("out/", { extensions: [".htm"], typhoeus: { verbose: true, ssl_verifyhost: 2 } })
This sets HTMLProofer’s extensions to use .htm, gives Typhoeus a configuration for it to be verbose, and use specific SSL settings. Check the Typhoeus documentation for more information on what options it can receive.
You can similarly pass in a :hydra option with a hash configuration for Hydra.
The default value is:
{
typhoeus:
{
followlocation: true,
connecttimeout: 10,
timeout: 30,
},
hydra: { max_concurrency: 50 },
}
On the CLI, you can provide the --typhoeus or hydra arguments to set the configurations. This is parsed using JSON.parse and mapped on top of the default configuration values so that they can be overridden.
before-request callbackYou can provide a block to set some logic before an external link is checked. For example, say you want to provide an authentication token every time a GitHub URL is checked. You can do that like this:
proofer = HTMLProofer.check_directory(item, opts)
proofer.before_request do |request|
request.options[:headers]["Authorization"] = "Bearer <TOKEN>" if request.base_url == "https://github.com"
end
proofer.run
The Authorization header is being set if and only if the base_url is https://github.com, and it is excluded for all other URLs.
Checking external URLs can slow your tests down. If you’d like to speed that up, you can enable caching for your external and internal links. Caching simply means to skip link checking for links that are valid for a certain period of time.
You can enable caching for this by passing in the configuration option :cache, with a hash containing a single key, :timeframe. :timeframe defines the length of time the cache will be used before the link is checked again. The format of :timeframe is a hash containing two keys, external and internal. Each of these contains a number followed by a letter indicating the length of time:
M means monthsw means weeksd means daysh means hoursFor example, passing the following options means “recheck external links older than thirty days”:
{ cache: { timeframe: { external: "30d" } } }
And the following options means “recheck internal links older than two weeks”:
{ cache: { timeframe: { internal: "2w" } } }
Naturally, to support both internal and external link caching, both keys would need to be provided. The following checks external links every two weeks, but internal links only once a week:
{ cache: { timeframe: { external: "2w", internal: "1w" } } }
You can change the filename or the directory where the cache file is kept by also providing the storage_dir key:
{ cache: { cache_file: "stay_cachey.json", storage_dir: "/tmp/html-proofer-cache-money" } }
Links that were failures are kept in the cache and always rechecked. If they pass, the cache is updated to note the new timestamp.
The cache operates on external links only.
If caching is enabled, HTMLProofer writes to a log file called tmp/.htmlproofer/cache.log. You should probably ignore this folder in your version control system.
On the CLI, you can provide the --cache argument to set the configuration. This is parsed using JSON.parse and mapped on top of the default configuration values so that they can be overridden.
Enable caching in your continuous integration process. It will make your builds faster.
In GitHub Actions:
Add this step to your build workflow before HTMLProofer is run:
- name: Cache HTMLProofer
id: cache-htmlproofer
uses: actions/cache@v2
with:
path: tmp/.htmlproofer
key: ${{ runner.os }}-htmlproofer
Also make sure that your later step which runs HTMLProofer will not return a failed shell status. You can try something like html-proof ... || true. Because a failed step in GitHub Actions will skip all later steps.
In Travis:
If you want to enable caching with Travis CI, be sure to add these lines into your .travis.yml file:
cache:
directories:
- $TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR/tmp/.htmlproofer
For more information on using HTML-Proofer with Travis CI, see this wiki page.
HTML-Proofer can be as noisy or as quiet as you’d like. If you set the :log_level option, you can better define the level of logging.
Want to write your own test? Sure, that’s possible!
Just create a class that inherits from HTMLProofer::Check. This subclass must define one method called run. This is called on your content, and is responsible for performing the validation on whatever elements you like. When you catch a broken issue, call add_failure(message, line: line, content: content) to explain the error. line refers to the line numbers, and content is the node content of the broken element.
If you’re working with the element’s attributes (as most checks do), you’ll also want to call create_element(node) as part of your suite. This constructs an object that contains all the attributes of the HTML element you’re iterating on, and can also be used directly to call add_failure(message, element: element).
Here’s an example custom test demonstrating these concepts. It reports mailto links that point to [email protected]:
class MailToOctocat < HTMLProofer::Check
def mailto_octocat?
@link.url.raw_attribute == "mailto:[email protected]"
end
def run
@html.css("a").each do |node|
@link = create_element(node)
next if @link.ignore?
return add_failure("Don't email the Octocat directly!", element: @link) if mailto_octocat?
end
end
end
Don’t forget to include this new check in HTMLProofer’s options, for example:
# removes default checks and just runs this one
HTMLProofer.check_directories(["out/"], { checks: ["MailToOctocat"] })
See our list of third-party custom classes and add your own to this list.
By default, HTML-Proofer has its own reporting mechanism to print errors at the end of the run. You can choose to use your own reporter by passing in your own subclass of HTMLProofer::Reporter:
proofer = HTMLProofer.check_directory(item, opts)
proofer.reporter = MyCustomReporter.new(logger: proofer.logger)
proofer.run
Your custom reporter must implement the report function which implements the behavior you wish to see. The logger kwarg is optional.
Here are some brief snippets identifying some common problems that you can work around. For more information, check out our wiki.
Our wiki page on using HTML-Proofer with Travis CI might also be useful.
To ignore SSL certificates, turn off Typhoeus’ SSL verification:
HTMLProofer.check_directory("out/", {
typhoeus: {
ssl_verifypeer: false,
ssl_verifyhost: 0,
},
}).run
To change the User-Agent used by Typhoeus:
HTMLProofer.check_directory("out/", {
typhoeus: {
headers: { "User-Agent" => "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; My New User-Agent)" },
}
}).run
Alternatively, you can specify these options on the command-line with:
htmlproofer --typhoeus='{"headers":{"User-Agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; My New User-Agent)"}}'
Sometimes links fail because they don’t have access to cookies. To fix this you can create a .cookies file using the following snippets:
HTMLProofer.check_directory("out/", {
typhoeus: {
cookiefile: ".cookies",
cookiejar: ".cookies",
}
}).run
htmlproofer --typhoeus='{"cookiefile":".cookies","cookiejar":".cookies"}'
To exclude urls using regular expressions, include them between forward slashes and don’t quote them:
HTMLProofer.check_directories(["out/"], {
ignore_urls: [/example.com/],
}).run
| Project | Repository | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Jekyll’s website | jekyll/jekyll | A separate script calls htmlproofer and this used to be called from Circle CI |
| Raspberry Pi’s documentation | raspberrypi/documentation | |
| Squeak’s website | squeak-smalltalk/squeak.org | |
| Atom Flight Manual | atom/flight-manual.atom.io | |
| HTML Website Template | fulldecent/html-website-template | A starting point for websites, uses a Rakefile and Travis configuration to call preconfigured testing |
| Project Calico Documentation | projectcalico/calico | Simple integration with Jekyll and Docker using a Makefile |
| GitHub does dotfiles | dotfiles/dotfiles.github.com | Uses the proof-html GitHub action |