Grunt plugin for HTML validation, using the Nu Html Checker (v.Nu).

Install this grunt plugin next to your project's Gruntfile.js with:

npm install grunt-html -D

Then add this line to your project's Gruntfile.js:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-html');

Then specify what files to validate in your config:

grunt.initConfig({
  htmllint: {
    all: ['demos/**/*.html', 'tests/**/*.html']
  }
});

For fast validation, keep that in a single group, as the validator initialization takes a few seconds.

When combined with a watching task (such as grunt-contrib-watch), even faster validation can be achieved by starting the validator in client mode and connecting to an already-running instance of the validator in server mode. This removes the time required by repeated initializations. See the server option below.

• Type: Array
• Default: ['info', 'warning', 'error']

Set errorlevels to control which error types are returned from the validator. Ignores all other returned types.

• Type: Boolean
• Default: false

Set force to true to report errors but not fail the grunt task.

• Type: Array, String, or RegExp
• Default: null

Use this to specify the error message(s) to ignore. For example:

all: {
  options: {
    ignore: 'The “clear” attribute on the “br” element is obsolete. Use CSS instead.'
  },
  src: 'html4.html'
}

The ignore option also supports regular expressions. For example, to ignore AngularJS directive attributes:

all: {
  options: {
    ignore: /attribute “ng-[a-z-]+” not allowed/
  },
  src: 'app.html'
}

• Type: Boolean
• Default: false

Set noLangDetect to true to skip the checking of the language of the page.

• Type: String
• Default: null

Allows you to modify the output format. By default, this plugin will use a built-in Grunt reporter. Set the path to your own custom reporter or to one of the provided reporters: checkstyle, junit or json.

• Type: String
• Default: null

Specify a filepath to output the results of a reporter. If reporterOutput is specified then all output will be written to the given filepath rather than printed to stdout.

• Type: Boolean
• Default: false

Set absoluteFilePathsForReporter to true to use absolute file paths in generated reports.

• Type: Object, or a falsy value
• Default: false

When server is set to a falsy value, the validator is invoked using java -jar, which can be considered normal operation.

Set server to an object to start the validator in client mode and connect to an already-running instance of the validator in server mode.

To start the validator in server mode, use java -cp "path/to/vnu.jar" nu.validator.servlet.Main <port>.

all: {
  options: {
    // connect to a validator instance running in server mode on localhost:8888
    server: {}
  },
  src: 'app.html'
}

The server object also accepts the host and port keys, specifying the location of the server.

all: {
  options: {
    server: {
      // your team's local dev tool machine, for example
      host: '192.168.0.5',
      port: 8877
    }
  },
  src: 'app.html'
}

The following configuration in Gruntfile.js uses grunt-vnuserver to start the validator in server mode and sets up a watch task to run htmllint every time the source file changes. By starting the validator in server mode once using the vnuserver task, validations by htmllint can be performed much faster by simply connecting to this already-running server.

module.exports = function (grunt) {
  grunt.initConfig({
    vnuserver: {
    },
    htmllint: {
      all: {
        options: {
          server: {}
        },
        src: 'app.html'
      }
    },
    watch: {
      all: {
        tasks: ['htmllint'],
        files: 'app.html'
      }
    }
  });
  grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-vnuserver');
  grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-html');
  grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');
  grunt.registerTask('default', ['vnuserver', 'watch']);
};

• Type: String, Boolean, Number
• Default: auto, which is the number of threads -1

Use this option to control the number of threads that grunt-html will use when validating a big number of files. This will spawn as many Java processes as the number of threads.

• vnu.jar requires Java 8 environment or up.

Copyright Jörn Zaefferer. Licensed under the MIT license.