Rails Plugin to Validate (X)HTML and CSS

Peter Donald — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:18:00 +1100

Here is an enahnced version of Scott Raymond’s assert_valid_markup plugin that I use in my projects. Below are the directions for use;

HowTo Validate (X)HTML

# Calling the assertion with no parameters validates 
# whatever is in @request.body, which is automatically 
# set by the existing get/post/etc helpers. For example:

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_bar_markup
    get :bar
    assert_valid_markup
  end
end

# Add a string parameter to the assertion to validate 
# any random fragment. For example:

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_bar_markup
    assert_valid_markup "<div>Hello, world.</div>"
  end
end

# For the ultimate in convenience, use the class-level
# method to validate a number of actions in one line. 

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  assert_valid_markup :bar, :baz, :qux
end

HowTo Validate CSS

# Pass a string parameter to the assertion to validate 
# a css fragment. For example:

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_bar_css
    filename = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/stylesheets/bar.css"
    assert_valid_css(File.open(filename ,'rb').read)
  end
end

# For the ultimate in convenience, use the class-level
# method to validate a bunch of css files in one line.
# Assumes that the CSS files are relative to 
# $RAILS_ROOT/public/stylesheets/ and end with '.css'. 
# The following example validates 
#  $RAILS_ROOT/public/stylesheets/layout.css, 
#  $RAILS_ROOT/public/stylesheets/standard.css and 
#  $RAILS_ROOT/public/stylesheets/theme.css

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  assert_valid_css_files 'layout', 'standard', 'theme'
end

Most of the credit for this plugin goes to Scott for the initial idea! The modifications that I made include;

Validation of CSS files.
Caching of fragments occurs in $RAILS_ROOT/tmp according to the name of the test class + test method. This avoids filling up the system temp folder with expired cache files.
Ability to turn off validation by setting the “NONET” environment variable to “true”.

You can grab it from subversion at;

http://www.realityforge.org/svn/code/assert-valid-asset/trunk/

Update 12th of May, 2008

Steve Sloan has also added a Git repo for the code which you can grab from:

http://github.com/CodeMonkeySteve/assert-valid-asset/tree/master

"Rails Plugin to Validate (X)HTML and CSS" by Peter Donald

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:07:48 +1100

Fixed, Thanks!

"Rails Plugin to Validate (X)HTML and CSS" by Steve Ross

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 03:48:21 +1100

In that last bit about the class method, you need to use: