Checks various aspects of a web page for correctness.
npm install check-pagesshell
npm install check-pages --save-dev
`
If you're using Grunt, the grunt-check-pages package wraps this functionality in a Grunt task.
If you're using Gulp or another framework, the example below shows how to integrate check-pages into your workflow.
For direct use, the check-pages-cli package wraps check-pages with a command-line interface.
Overview
An important aspect of creating a web site is validating the structure, content, and configuration of the site's pages. The checkPages task provides an easy way to integrate this testing into your workflow.
By providing a list of pages to scan, the task can:
* Validate each page is accessible
* Validate all links point to accessible content (similar to the W3C Link Checker)
* Validate links with query string file hashes have the expected content
* Validate all links use the secure HTTPS protocol where possible
* Validate page structure for XHTML compliance (akin to the W3C Markup Validation Service)
* Validate a page's response time is below some threshold
* Validate a page takes advantage of caching for better performance
* Validate a page takes advantage of compression for better performance
Usage
To use check-pages with Gulp, create a task and invoke checkPages, passing the task's callback function.
The following example includes all supported options:
`js
var gulp = require("gulp");
var checkPages = require("check-pages");
gulp.task("checkDev", [ "start-development-server" ], function(callback) {
var options = {
pageUrls: [
'http://localhost:8080/',
'http://localhost:8080/blog',
'http://localhost:8080/about.html'
],
checkLinks: true,
linksToIgnore: [
'http://localhost:8080/broken.html'
],
noEmptyFragments: true,
noLocalLinks: true,
noRedirects: true,
onlySameDomain: true,
preferSecure: true,
queryHashes: true,
checkCaching: true,
checkCompression: true,
checkXhtml: true,
summary: true,
terse: true,
maxResponseTime: 200,
userAgent: 'custom-user-agent/1.2.3'
};
checkPages(console, options, callback);
});
gulp.task("checkProd", function(callback) {
var options = {
pageUrls: [
'http://example.com/',
'http://example.com/blog',
'http://example.com/about.html'
],
checkLinks: true,
maxResponseTime: 500
};
checkPages(console, options, callback);
});
`
API
`js
/**
* Checks various aspects of a web page for correctness.
*
* @param {object} host Specifies the environment.
* @param {object} options Configures the task.
* @param {function} done Callback function.
* @returns {void}
*/
module.exports = function(host, options, done) { ... }
`
$3
Type: Object
Required
Specifies the task environment.
For convenience, console can be passed directly (as in the example above).
#### log
Type: Function (parameters: String)
Required
Function used to log informational messages.
#### error
Type: Function (parameters: String)
Required
Function used to log error messages.
$3
Type: Object
Required
Specifies the task configuration.
#### pageUrls
Type: Array of String
Default value: undefined
Required
pageUrls specifies a list of URLs for web pages the task will check. The list can be empty, but must be present. Wildcards are not supported.
URLs can point to local or remote content via the http, https, and file protocols. http and https URLs must be absolute; file URLs can be relative. Some features (for example, HTTP header checks) are not available with the file protocol.
#### checkLinks
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Enabling checkLinks causes each link in a page to be checked for validity (i.e., an HTTP HEAD or GET request returns success).
For efficiency, a HEAD request is made first and a successful result validates the link. Because some web servers misbehave, a failed HEAD request is followed by a GET request to definitively validate the link.
The following element/attribute pairs are used to identify links:
* a/href
* area/href
* audio/src
* embed/src
* iframe/src
* img/src
* img/srcset
* input/src
* link/href
* object/data
* script/src
* source/src
* source/srcset
* track/src
* video/src
* video/poster
#### linksToIgnore
Type: Array of String
Default value: undefined
Used by: checkLinks
linksToIgnore specifies a list of URLs that should be ignored by the link checker.
This is useful for links that are not accessible during development or known to be unreliable.
#### noEmptyFragments
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Used by: checkLinks
Set this option to true to fail the task if any links contain an empty fragment identifier (hash) such as .
This is useful to identify placeholder links that haven't been updated.
#### noLocalLinks
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Used by: checkLinks
Set this option to true to fail the task if any links to localhost are:
* localhost
* 127.0.0.1 (and the rest of the 127.0.0.0/8 address block)
* ::1 (and its expanded forms)
#### noRedirects
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Used by: checkLinks
Set this option to true to fail the task if any HTTP redirects are encountered.
This is useful to ensure outgoing links are to the content's canonical location.
#### onlySameDomain
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Used by: checkLinks
Set this option to true to block the checking of links on different domains than the referring page.
This is useful during development when external sites aren't changing and don't need to be checked.
#### preferSecure
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Used by: checkLinks
Set this option to true to fail the task if any HTTP links are present where the corresponding HTTPS link is also valid.
This is useful to ensure outgoing links use a secure protocol wherever possible.
#### queryHashes
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Used by: checkLinks
Set this option to true to verify links with file hashes in the query string point to content that hashes to the expected value.
Query hashes can be used to invalidate cached responses when leveraging browser caching via long cache lifetimes.
Supported hash functions are:
* image.png?crc32=e4f013b5
* styles.css?md5=4f47458e34bc855a46349c1335f58cc3
* archive.zip?sha1=9511fa1a787d021bdf3aa9538029a44209fb5c4c
#### checkCaching
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Enabling checkCaching verifies the HTTP Cache-Control and ETag response headers are present and valid.
This is useful to ensure a page makes use of browser caching for better performance.
#### checkCompression
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Enabling checkCompression verifies the HTTP Content-Encoding response header is present and valid.
This is useful to ensure a page makes use of compression for better performance.
#### checkXhtml
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Enabling checkXhtml attempts to parse each URL's content as XHTML and fails if there are any structural errors.
This is useful to ensure a page's structure is well-formed and unambiguous for browsers.
#### summary
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Enabling the summary option logs a summary of each issue found after all checks have completed.
This makes it easy to pick out failures when running tests against many pages. May be combined with the terse option.
#### terse
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Enabling the terse option suppresses the logging of each check as it runs, instead displaying a brief overview at the end.
This is useful for scripting or to reduce output. May be combined with the summary option.
#### maxResponseTime
Type: Number
Default value: undefined
maxResponseTime specifies the maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) a page request can take to finish downloading.
Requests that take more time will trigger a failure (but are still checked for other issues).
#### userAgent
Type: String
Default value: check-pages/x.y.z
userAgent specifies the value of the HTTP User-Agent header sent with all page/link requests.
This is useful for pages that alter their behavior based on the user agent. Setting the value null omits the User-Agent header entirely.
Release History
* 0.7.0 - Initial release, extract functionality from grunt-check-pages for use with Gulp.
* 0.7.1 - Fix misreporting of "Bad link" for redirected links when noRedirects enabled.
* 0.8.0 - Suppress redundant link checks, support noEmptyFragments option, update dependencies.
* 0.9.0 - Add support for checking local content via the 'file:' protocol, update dependencies.
* 0.10.0 - International URLs, preferSecure option, terse option, srcset`, update dependencies.