[thelist] HTML validation for protected pages

[Tim Beadle]

On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 14:59, Sam Carter wrote:
> I develop dynamic web content that requires user login before accessing the
> page.  It's a lot of trouble to validate the HTML since these pages are not
> accessible without login.
>  
> The way I validate these pages today is a lot of trouble.
>  
> Anyone have an easier solution than this 9 step method ?

1. Install a copy of the validator on a machine on your local network
2. Set up .htaccess rules to allow access to the IP address of the
machine running the validator instead of requiring a login - *for that
IP address only*.

OR

3. Run and validate against a local development version of the site -
you *do* have a dev server, right?

OR

4. Use an XHTML doctype and send the content as application/xhtml+xml to
user agents that accept it (test the value of cgi.http_accept). Then if
you use (e.g.) Firefox to test the page, it will use its XML parser and
go all beige on you if there's even 1 little validation error. Easy
client-side validation!

HTH,

Tim
-- 
Tim Beadle <tim.beadle at iop.org>