Documentation is Ongoing

NOTE: The developer information and documentation is ongoing. If you believe that there is anything missing or inaccurate then please contact us.

Additional links:

• Main Developer Info Page
• Using the FastCGI interface
• Using the validator engine DLL API
• Finding csevalidator[-x64].dll
• Using standard output
• Output format & sample output (Original)
• Output format (JSON)
• Linking to Our Help Pages
• Using global atom method
• Other useful information

Using the FastCGI Interface

In v14.03+, there is a new FastCGI (new window) interface that works using a pipe and can be used to interface with the validator engine without the need of loading a DLL into a 3rd party application. This means that it doesn't matter whether the 3rd party app is a 32-bit or 64-bit app (like it would if using the DLL). Furthermore, it's more efficient than making many calls to cmdlineprocessor.exe.

NOTE: PhpED v13 (new window) is the first to use this new interface.

• To run in FastCGI mode, simply run cmdlineprocessor.exe with STDIN but without STDOUT and STDERR streams. STDIN will be used as the FastCGI communication pipe.
• New requests using FCGI_BEGIN_REQUEST should set the FCGI_KEEP_CONN flag appropriately; if it's not set then the program will automatically exit after the request is completed.
• Send the document to be checked to FASTCGI_STDIN using UTF16LE:
  • Use CRLF, LF, or CR for the end-of-line markers
• The job runs after receiving an empty PARAMS record and an empty STDIN record to indicate the end of the input
• The output is sent to FASTCGI_STDOUT using UTF16LE:
  • The output is in this format: https://www.htmlvalidator.com/support/developer-original-output-format.php
  • The output uses \n end-of-line markers
• Any parameters should be encoded using UTF8 (not UTF16), and parameter names are case-sensitive:
  • COMMANDLINEARGS - set this to execute its value as if it were the arguments passed to commandlineprocessor.exe (FASTCGI_STDIN data must be empty)
  • CSEJOBTYPE - set to 10 for a CSS style sheet (see CSEJOBTYPE in csevalidator.h)
  • HWND - set HWND for things like dialogs
  • SHOWVALIDATOROPTIONSDIALOG - value is HWND (FASTCGI_STDIN data must be empty)
• Anything sent to FASTCGI_STDERR is sent using UTF8 (not UTF16)
• The program should automatically exit if the STDIN pipe is broken