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<!--#set var="revision" value="\$Id: checklink.html,v 1.5 2002-11-19 21:43:31 ville Exp $"
--><!--#set var="date" value="\$Date: 2002-11-19 21:43:31 $"
--><!--#set var="title" value="W3C Link Checker documentation"
--><!--#set var="relroot" value="../"
--><!--#include virtual="../header.html" -->
<h1 id="skip">W3C Link Checker documentation</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#about">About this service</a></li>
<li><a href="#what">What it does</a></li>
<li><a href="#online">Use it online</a></li>
<li><a href="#install">Install it locally</a></li>
<li><a href="#csb">Comments, suggestions and bugs</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="about" id="about">About this service</a></h2>
<p>
In order to check the validity of the technical reports that W3C
publishes, the Systems Team has developed a link checker.
</p>
<p>
A first version was developed in August 1998 by
<a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Renaud/">Renaud Bruyeron</a>.
Since it was lacking some functionalities,
<a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Hugo/">Hugo Haas</a>
rewrote it more or less from scratch in November 1999.
</p>
<p>
The source code is available publicly under the
<a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software">W3C IPR
software notice</a> from
<a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/checklink.pl">CVS</a>.
</p>
<h2><a name="what" id="what">What it does</a></h2>
<p>
The link checker reads an HTML or XHTML document and extracts a list
of anchors and links.
</p>
<p>
It checks that no anchor is defined twice.
</p>
<p>
It then checks that all the links are dereferenceable, including
the fragments. It warns about HTTP redirects, including directory
redirects.
</p>
<p>
It can check recursively a part of a Web site.
</p>
<p>
There is a command line version and a CGI version. They both
support <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2617.txt">HTTP basic
authentication</a>. This is achieved in the CGI version
by passing through the authorization information from the user browser
to the site tested.
</p>
<h2><a name="online" id="online">Use it online</a></h2>
<p>
There is an
<a href="<!--#echo var="relroot" -->checklink">online version</a>
of the link checker.
</p>
<p>
The number of documents that can be checked recursively is limited
and there is a delay between each document checked to avoid abuses.
</p>
<h2><a name="install" id="install">Install it locally</a></h2>
<p>
The link checker is written in Perl. It is one single file, but it
requires some CPAN modules.
</p>
<p>In order to install it:</p>
<ol>
<li>
Install <a href="http://www.perl.com/">Perl</a>.
</li>
<li>
You will need the following <a href="http://www.cpan.org/">CPAN</a>
distributions, as well as the distributions they possibly depend on.
Depending on your Perl version, you might already have some of
these installed. For an introduction to installing Perl modules,
see <a href="http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_install_Perl_modules">The CPAN FAQ</a>.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/libwww-perl/">libwww-perl</a> (version 5.60 or newer if you want HTTP/1.1 with <code>Keep-Alive</code>)</li>
<li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/HTML-Parser/">HTML-Parser</a> (version 3.00 or newer)</li>
<li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI.pm/">CGI.pm</a></li>
<li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/URI/">URI</a></li>
<li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/Time-HiRes/">Time-HiRes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/TermReadKey/">TermReadKey</a> (optional but recommended for all platforms; required for password input in command line mode for systems that don't have the <code>stty</code> command, eg. Windows)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Download the link checker from
<a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/checklink.pl">CVS</a>.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
Calling <code>checklink.pl</code> without any arguments runs the
CGI version, and running <code>checklink.pl --help</code> shows how to
use the command line version.
</p>
<p>
If you want to enable the authentication capabilities with Apache,
have a look at
<a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/1999JulSep/0140.html">Steven Drake's hack</a>.
</p>
<h2><a name="csb" id="csb">Comments, suggestions and bugs</a></h2>
<p>
The current version has proven to be stable. It could however be
improved, see the <a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi?product=LinkChecker&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED">list of open enhancement ideas and bugs</a> for details.
</p>
<p>
Please send comments, suggestions and bugs about the link checker
to the <a href="mailto:www-validator@w3.org?subject=checklink%3A%20">www-validator mailing list</a>
(<a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/">archives</a>),
with 'checklink' in the subject.
</p>
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