CSE HTML Validator

by **Albert Wiersch** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 1:01 pm

One of the features that I would like to add in v7.0 is the valid recognition of proprietary ASP.NET attributes so that ASP.NET developers can make better use of CSE HTML Validator when checking the output of their ASP.NET pages. Does anyone here have a web site built with ASP.NET that I can use in testing the new ASP.NET support? Also, if anyone knows where I can get a list of ASP.NET proprietary tags and attributes, then please let me know. Thanks!

by **adbw** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:13 pm

have you tried www.asp.net or http://www.gotdotnet.com/?

by **pmorris@intravsn.com** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 6:40 pm

I'm happy to let you use my medical website www.allhealthcarejobs.com An issue regarding proprietary tags is that ASP.NET is extensible. My website includes a number of custom controls, several of which emit attributes of my own naming for javascript to work with. so in reality there isn't a constrained set of attributes as far as ASP.NET websites are concerned.

On a related topic - at least as it pertains to ASP.NET - one of the downsides of the flexibility offered by this framework is that injection of HTML code can occur anywhere. For example, Microsoft provide an example of injecting a footer to each page as it goes out. There is a problem however, in that injection of footer HTML occurs AFTER the final </HTML> tag from the normal webpage! Since I had developed a border control that does the same thing, I also developed an Html Organizer, which parses the HTML prior to being sent to the client browser, to ensure that there is but a single <Head> section, and a single <Body> section, all contained inside the <Html> tags. Correcting these problems is not possible by design of the webpage itself.

The HtmlOrganizer can be seen at work at http://www.dotnetwebtools.com/samples/H ... nizer.aspx

by **Albert Wiersch** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 1:25 pm

Thanks for the info on ASP.NET. I do not use it myself so the information was useful to me!

I'd be happy to add popular ASP.NET tags and attributes to the validator to help make validation easier, but I am not sure which ones are popular enough and used enough to make them worth adding. If anyone has any specific suggestions as to commonly used proprietary ASP.NET attributes, then please let me know for possible future addition. It doesn't make sense to add the less commonly used ones because I suspect that there would just be too many.

Of course, if you have the professional edition, then you can add your own tag names and attributes using the Configuration Editor.

by **pmorris@intravsn.com** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 2:25 pm

Albert:

It will take some time to determine all the tags that Microsoft use. I went to the ASP.NET documentation on msdn.microsoft.com, thinking that perhaps you could use that as a starting point, but it isn't obvious from the documentation what attributes get emitted to the client browser.

One possiblity, but it will take some time, is to download a free 'beginner' Visual Studio at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/expre ... fault.aspx and create a simple website with each of the standard controls. The HTML will then tell you the attributes used in the standard controls. Of course, you'll need a Windows machine with IIS to do this.

by **MikeGale** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:43 pm

Hi,

I had a good look at this some time ago. It's a fairly hard job and the markup emitted by ASP.NET 1.1 was fairly horrific. I made a couple of suggestions back then. I haven't yet checked ASP.NET 2.0.

I have however checked some existing ASP.NET 1.1 stuff in the last few days. (This code works, is I think all 1.1 and uses the following:

1) Code behind compile on demand (using the src attribute) so it's developed in VS then modified to run without that horrible redeployment (and associated testing) of huge DLL's. ASP.NET 2.0 supports various scenarios like this, so it's an improvement.

2) A few one piece pages where the code is inline on the same page as the markup. (It looks a lot like classic ASP but isn't.) Again this takes a little more work in version 1.1.

3) No conventional compiled ASP.NET in this batch! )

The following came up a few times:

A) Inline code didn't validate, it should have ignored the stuff processed by the ASP.NET engine entirely. This looks like:

<%@ Page Language="vb" autoeventwireup="false" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.IO" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data.OleDb" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="***" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Data" %>

<script language="VB" runat="Server">
...
</script>

It would be cool to ignore that and get mileage from CSE when looking at this type of source.

B) There is a family of markup that starts <asp:Xxxx where the Xxxx is Pascal cased (I think) like Panel, Textbox.... CSE chokes on this interpreting it as standard XHTML 1.1 in my case. It isn't. It gets transformed in the ASPX process and served up in a browser dependent way. It would be useful if CSE ignored this stuff.

There is a related issue. Firing some pages has side effects like writing to database, writing files... This makes them harder to validate. Some approaches to this would be most valuable if anybody's creative thinking kicks up a solution. (Failing that a discussion in the help might save some people from making mistakes that could lead them to abandon validation.)

by **Albert Wiersch** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 12:09 pm

Mike,

Could you zip up some ASP documents that you'd like CSE HTML Validator to be better at checking and send them to me at support at htmlvalidator dot com?

Also, would a new validator option to ignore tags starting with "asp:" help?

I'm currently working on improving ASP.NET validation for the next v8.0 BETA.

by **MikeGale** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 5:26 pm

Hi,

I've emailed a zip with two files inside. These files illustrate ASP.NET 1.1 pages with code on the page and several references (import statements), and a selection of ASP.NET tags as found in source (before the engine renders them). The context has been shortened and confidential material removed, but the structure of the pages should represent some found in the wild.

You mention elsewhere rendered markup containing underscores. I think some have multiple underscores at the start of an identifier.

Hope that's useful.

The transition from ASP.NET 1.1 to 2 seems to be slow, from my interpretation of ISP comments. This makes sense as the initial default compilation model was very different and introduced problems of it's own. Since release two other compilation models are now supported. Some developers find the variety a discouragement.

So support of 1.1 is probably needed long term.

by **Albert Wiersch** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 5:33 pm

Thanks Mike! I have received the files and will take a look.

by **iampedro** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 6:42 pm

How is this coming along were you able to put .net 1.1 and 2.0 checking into version 8.0?

by **Albert Wiersch** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:18 am

iampedro wrote:How is this coming along were you able to put .net 1.1 and 2.0 checking into version 8.0?

CSE HTML Validator doesn't check ASP code in documents, but it does try to ignore it so it can check the HTML that's also in ASP pages. CSE HTML Validator v8.0 should be better able to ignore ASP tags and ASP code. However, you should always check the final HTML output with CSE HTML Validator as it was not designed to check "raw/unprocessed" ASP (and PHP) pages. The integrated web browser should be helpful in doing this.

I hope this helps.

CSE HTML Validator

ASP.NET

ASP.NET

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