django-output-validator 1.5
App to catch HTML errors (or other errors) in outgoing Django pages.
License: MIT
Keywords: django HTML XHTML validation validator

=======================
Django output validator
=======================

**This project is no longer under active development, and may not work with modern versions of Django.** The primary reasons for this are 1) that I have been unable to find any robust command line validators for HTML5, and 2) I rarely worry about HTML5 validation due to my frustrations with the spec and its authors which go out of their way to make life difficult for tool authors e.g. `bug 12561 <https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12561>`_

A more recent package with similar aims is: https://github.com/peterbe/django-html-validator


This app validates all the HTML (or potentially other data) that is generated by
your Django project. This is meant to be used only in development.

Installation
============

* Run setup.py to install the package into your python path.

* Add "output_validator" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

* If you have removed ``"django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader"`` from
  your TEMPLATE_LOADERS, you need to add the 'templates' folder to your
  TEMPLATE_DIRS setting.

* Insert the middleware
  ``"output_validator.middleware.ValidatorMiddleware"``
  near the beginning of the middleware list (which means it will get
  the the response object after everything else). It must be after
  every middleware that does post-processing, but mustn't be after
  GZip, since it can't handle gzipped HTML. ( I just disable the GZip
  middleware for development)

* Alter your URL conf to include the URLs for the validator. You need
  this line inserted somewhere::

      (r'^validator/', include('output_validator.urls'))

* Add a setting to tell the app where to find the 'validate'
  executable used for validation. This is a dictionary of mimetypes
  and corresponding validators, allowing this app to be extended to
  any other generated content::

      OUTPUT_VALIDATOR_VALIDATORS = {
        'text/html': '/usr/bin/validate',
        'application/xml+xhtml': '/usr/bin/validate',
      }

  I usually use a small wrapper for this executable that pops up
  a message when it fails - the following works for GNOME
  (if you have the notify-send program installed)::

      #!/bin/sh
      validate "$1" || {
          notify-send "Validation failed";
      }

* Finally, run the django admin script to set up the database tables::

    ./manage.py --settings="yourproject.settings" syncdb

  OR, if you are using South::

    ./manage.py --settings="yourproject.settings" migrate output_validator

* Optionally, set the following settings:

  * OUTPUT_VALIDATOR_IGNORE_PATHS - this is a list of path prefixes that
    will be ignored.  For example, if you have the admin at ``/admin/``
    you can ignore any errors in the admin with this::

        OUTPUT_VALIDATOR_IGNORE_PATHS = [
            '/admin/',
        ]


Usage
=====

When browsing any of your pages in development, all HTML will be validated. If
it fails, it will be logged. You can see all failures at
'http://localhost:8000/validator/' (assuming local development and the URL conf
suggested above). Use the app to delete old failures once they have been fixed.


Changelog
=========

Version 1.5 - 2010-12-01
------------------------

* Re-branded as django-output-validator and packaged properly.

  If you used the previous version, you should drop the old
  'validator_validationfailure' table (assuming it doesn't have any data you
  need, of course). Then go through the installation instructions in the README
  and update the name/values of the relevant settings.

* Fixed stashing of request objects (now uses repr). This is BACKWARDS
  INCOMPATIBLE with existing data (but we are using a new table anyway).


Version 1.4 - 2008-04-28
------------------------

* Changed maxlength to max_length, as per change in Django.
* Corrections to instructions (thanks to Gary Wilson)
* Fixed deprecation warnings (thanks to Gary Wilson)


Version 1.3 - 2007-11-05
------------------------

* Updated for unicodisation of Django.

  This is a BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBLE change.

  The problem was caused by the fact that you used to able to store arbitrary
  binary data in a TextField, which is no longer possible. As a result, I am
  using base64 encoding for any pickled objects. I haven't written an upgrade
  script for the database (since I personally keep the list of failed pages to
  zero). If you are upgrading from a previous version, any of your existing
  ValidationFailure objects will be corrupted (the 'request' and 'response' data
  will be lost). Either deal with the errors before upgrading, or write a
  conversion script of some kind :-)

Version 1.2 - 2007-04-18
------------------------

* Fixed bug that occurred when settings.VALIDATOR_APP_IGNORE_PATHS wasn't set
* Added logic to stop duplicate failures being logged

Version 1.1 - 2005-12-14
------------------------

* Added optional VALIDATOR_APP_IGNORE_PATHS setting.
* Added support for mod_python handler - thanks to 'nesh'.
* Added a setup.py script.

Version 1.0 - 2005-11-19
------------------------
* Initial release