Validating DHTML against a schema

[Jim Higson]

Debugging scrited sites would be easier if I could check my HTML stays
valid.

I've used various HTML validators that grab the (X)HTML and run it against a
schema, but what about validating the 'live' HTML once the DOMs been
modified by a script?

Is there any (reasonably easy) way to tell a browser to send the current
state of a page to a validator?

Ta,
Jim

 

[hywel.jenkins]

Debugging scrited sites would be easier if I could check my HTML stays
valid.

I've used various HTML validators that grab the (X)HTML and run it against a
schema, but what about validating the 'live' HTML once the DOMs been
modified by a script?

Is there any (reasonably easy) way to tell a browser to send the current
state of a page to a validator?

Why not just ensure that your script outputs schema-valid HTML in the
first place?

 

[Jim Higson]

Why not just ensure that your script outputs schema-valid HTML in the
first place?

Sure, but how do I check?

I mean, it *looks* valid, but there are DOM elements being changed here and
there and there's no way to be certain other than schema validation.

 

[Andy Dingley]

I've used various HTML validators that grab the (X)HTML and run it against a
schema, but what about validating the 'live' HTML once the DOMs been
modified by a script?

When modifying the page, modify the DOM (by adding elements to it)
rather than trying to modify the page source (with document.write() )
This will become increasingly important as we move towards XHTML being
processed as XML.

This doesn't guarantee that the page will be valid, but it does preserve
well-formedness at least, and that's most of the battle.

It would be an interesting exercise to write a FireFox extension that
validated the DOM's current contents, rather than the original source.
You already have most of the hooks in place to do this - FF makes it
quite easy to get the "rendered" source, which I think is tracking the
state of the page that you need (I've certainly manually cut and pasted
this into validators)

 

[Toby Inkster]

I mean, it *looks* valid, but there are DOM elements being changed here and
there and there's no way to be certain other than schema validation.

Perhaps grab document.body.innerHTML and send it to a validator?