Dynamic W3C Validation

Question

I have a small element on my website that displays the validity of the current page's markup. At the moment, it is statically set as "HTML5 Valid", as I constantly check whether it is, in fact, HTML5 valid. If it's not then I fix any issues so it stays HTML5-valid.

I would like this element to be dynamic, though. So, is there any way to ping the W3C Validation Service with the current URL, receive the result and then plug the result into a PHP or JavaScript function? Does the W3C offer an API for this or do you have to manually code this?

Answer 1

Maintainer of the W3C HTML Checker (aka validator) here. In fact the checker does expose an API that lets you do, for example:

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.com%2F&out=json

…which gives you the results back as JSON. There’s also a POST interface.

You can find more details here:

• https://github.com/validator/validator/wiki/Service-»-HTTP-interface
• https://github.com/validator/validator/wiki/Service-»-Input-»-POST-body
• https://github.com/validator/validator/wiki/Service-»-Input-»-GET
• https://github.com/validator/validator/wiki/Output-»-JSON