broken-link-checker
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Find broken links, missing images, etc in your HTML.
Features:
<a href><base>Node.js >= 0.10 is required; < 4.0 will need Promise and Object.assign polyfills.
There're two ways to use it:
To install, type this at the command line:
npm install broken-link-checker -g
After that, check out the help for available options:
blc --help
A typical site-wide check might look like:
blc http://yoursite.com -ro
To install, type this at the command line:
npm install broken-link-checker
The rest of this document will assist you with how to use the API.
blc.HtmlChecker(options, handlers)Scans an HTML document to find broken links.
handlers.complete is fired after the last result or zero results.
handlers.html is fired after the HTML document has been fully parsed.
tree is supplied by parse5robots is an instance of robot-directives containing any <meta> robot exclusions.handlers.junk is fired with data on each skipped link, as configured in options.
handlers.link is fired with the result of each discovered link (broken or not).
.clearCache() will remove any cached URL responses. This is only relevant if the cacheResponses option is enabled.
.numActiveLinks() returns the number of links with active requests.
.numQueuedLinks() returns the number of links that currently have no active requests.
.pause() will pause the internal link queue, but will not pause any active requests.
.resume() will resume the internal link queue.
.scan(html, baseUrl) parses & scans a single HTML document. Returns false when there is a previously incomplete scan (and true otherwise).
html can be a stream or a string.baseUrl is the address to which all relative URLs will be made absolute. Without a value, links to relative URLs will output an "Invalid URL" error.var htmlChecker = new blc.HtmlChecker(options, {
html: function(tree, robots){},
junk: function(result){},
link: function(result){},
complete: function(){}
});
htmlChecker.scan(html, baseUrl);
blc.HtmlUrlChecker(options, handlers)Scans the HTML content at each queued URL to find broken links.
handlers.end is fired when the end of the queue has been reached.
handlers.html is fired after a page's HTML document has been fully parsed.
tree is supplied by parse5.robots is an instance of robot-directives containing any <meta> and X-Robots-Tag robot exclusions.handlers.junk is fired with data on each skipped link, as configured in options.
handlers.link is fired with the result of each discovered link (broken or not) within the current page.
handlers.page is fired after a page's last result, on zero results, or if the HTML could not be retrieved.
.clearCache() will remove any cached URL responses. This is only relevant if the cacheResponses option is enabled.
.dequeue(id) removes a page from the queue. Returns true on success or an Error on failure.
.enqueue(pageUrl, customData) adds a page to the queue. Queue items are auto-dequeued when their requests are complete. Returns a queue ID on success or an Error on failure.
customData is optional data that is stored in the queue item for the page..numActiveLinks() returns the number of links with active requests.
.numPages() returns the total number of pages in the queue.
.numQueuedLinks() returns the number of links that currently have no active requests.
.pause() will pause the queue, but will not pause any active requests.
.resume() will resume the queue.
var htmlUrlChecker = new blc.HtmlUrlChecker(options, {
html: function(tree, robots, response, pageUrl, customData){},
junk: function(result, customData){},
link: function(result, customData){},
page: function(error, pageUrl, customData){},
end: function(){}
});
htmlUrlChecker.enqueue(pageUrl, customData);
blc.SiteChecker(options, handlers)Recursively scans (crawls) the HTML content at each queued URL to find broken links.
handlers.end is fired when the end of the queue has been reached.
handlers.html is fired after a page's HTML document has been fully parsed.
tree is supplied by parse5.robots is an instance of robot-directives containing any <meta> and X-Robots-Tag robot exclusions.handlers.junk is fired with data on each skipped link, as configured in options.
handlers.link is fired with the result of each discovered link (broken or not) within the current page.
handlers.page is fired after a page's last result, on zero results, or if the HTML could not be retrieved.
handlers.robots is fired after a site's robots.txt has been downloaded and provides an instance of robots-txt-guard.
handlers.site is fired after a site's last result, on zero results, or if the initial HTML could not be retrieved.
.clearCache() will remove any cached URL responses. This is only relevant if the cacheResponses option is enabled.
.dequeue(id) removes a site from the queue. Returns true on success or an Error on failure.
.enqueue(siteUrl, customData) adds [the first page of] a site to the queue. Queue items are auto-dequeued when their requests are complete. Returns a queue ID on success or an Error on failure.
customData is optional data that is stored in the queue item for the site..numActiveLinks() returns the number of links with active requests.
.numPages() returns the total number of pages in the queue.
.numQueuedLinks() returns the number of links that currently have no active requests.
.numSites() returns the total number of sites in the queue.
.pause() will pause the queue, but will not pause any active requests.
.resume() will resume the queue.
Note: options.filterLevel is used for determining which links are recursive.
var siteChecker = new blc.SiteChecker(options, {
robots: function(robots, customData){},
html: function(tree, robots, response, pageUrl, customData){},
junk: function(result, customData){},
link: function(result, customData){},
page: function(error, pageUrl, customData){},
site: function(error, siteUrl, customData){},
end: function(){}
});
siteChecker.enqueue(siteUrl, customData);
blc.UrlChecker(options, handlers)Requests each queued URL to determine if they are broken.
handlers.end is fired when the end of the queue has been reached.
handlers.link is fired for each result (broken or not).
.clearCache() will remove any cached URL responses. This is only relevant if the cacheResponses option is enabled.
.dequeue(id) removes a URL from the queue. Returns true on success or an Error on failure.
.enqueue(url, baseUrl, customData) adds a URL to the queue. Queue items are auto-dequeued when their requests are completed. Returns a queue ID on success or an Error on failure.
baseUrl is the address to which all relative URLs will be made absolute. Without a value, links to relative URLs will output an "Invalid URL" error.customData is optional data that is stored in the queue item for the URL..numActiveLinks() returns the number of links with active requests.
.numQueuedLinks() returns the number of links that currently have no active requests.
.pause() will pause the queue, but will not pause any active requests.
.resume() will resume the queue.
var urlChecker = new blc.UrlChecker(options, {
link: function(result, customData){},
end: function(){}
});
urlChecker.enqueue(url, baseUrl, customData);
options.acceptedSchemesType: Array
Default value: ["http","https"]
Will only check links with schemes/protocols mentioned in this list. Any others (except those in excludedSchemes) will output an "Invalid URL" error.
options.cacheExpiryTimeType: Number
Default Value: 3600000 (1 hour)
The number of milliseconds in which a cached response should be considered valid. This is only relevant if the cacheResponses option is enabled.
options.cacheResponsesType: Boolean
Default Value: true
URL request results will be cached when true. This will ensure that each unique URL will only be checked once.
options.excludedKeywordsType: Array
Default value: []
Will not check or output links that match the keywords and glob patterns in this list. The only wildcard supported is *.
This option does not apply to UrlChecker.
options.excludedSchemesType: Array
Default value: ["data","geo","javascript","mailto","sms","tel"]
Will not check or output links with schemes/protocols mentioned in this list. This avoids the output of "Invalid URL" errors with links that cannot be checked.
This option does not apply to UrlChecker.
options.excludeExternalLinksType: Boolean
Default value: false
Will not check or output external links when true; relative links with a remote <base> included.
This option does not apply to UrlChecker.
options.excludeInternalLinksType: Boolean
Default value: false
Will not check or output internal links when true.
This option does not apply to UrlChecker nor SiteChecker's crawler.
options.excludeLinksToSamePageType: Boolean
Default value: true
Will not check or output links to the same page; relative and absolute fragments/hashes included.
This option does not apply to UrlChecker.
options.filterLevelType: Number
Default value: 1
The tags and attributes that are considered links for checking, split into the following levels:
0: clickable links1: clickable links, media, iframes, meta refreshes2: clickable links, media, iframes, meta refreshes, stylesheets, scripts, forms3: clickable links, media, iframes, meta refreshes, stylesheets, scripts, forms, metadataRecursive links have a slightly different filter subset. To see the exact breakdown of both, check out the tag map. <base> is not listed because it is not a link, though it is always parsed.
This option does not apply to UrlChecker.
options.honorRobotExclusionsType: Boolean
Default value: true
Will not scan pages that search engine crawlers would not follow. Such will have been specified with any of the following:
<a rel="nofollow" href="…"><area rel="nofollow" href="…"><meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,…"><meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,nofollow,…"><meta name="robots" content="unavailable_after: …">X-Robots-Tag: noindex,nofollow,…X-Robots-Tag: googlebot: noindex,nofollow,…X-Robots-Tag: otherbot: noindex,nofollow,…X-Robots-Tag: unavailable_after: …This option does not apply to UrlChecker.
options.maxSocketsType: Number
Default value: Infinity
The maximum number of links to check at any given time.
options.maxSocketsPerHostType: Number
Default value: 1
The maximum number of links per host/port to check at any given time. This avoids overloading a single target host with too many concurrent requests. This will not limit concurrent requests to other hosts.
options.rateLimitType: Number
Default value: 0
The number of milliseconds to wait before each request.
options.requestMethodType: String
Default value: "head"
The HTTP request method used in checking links. If you experience problems, try using "get", however options.retry405Head should have you covered.
options.retry405HeadType: Boolean
Default value: true
Some servers do not respond correctly to a "head" request method. When true, a link resulting in an HTTP 405 "Method Not Allowed" error will be re-requested using a "get" method before deciding that it is broken.
options.userAgentType: String
Default value: "broken-link-checker/0.7.0 Node.js/5.5.0 (OS X El Capitan; x64)" (or similar)
The HTTP user-agent to use when checking links as well as retrieving pages and robot exclusions.
A broken link will have a broken value of true and a reason code defined in brokenReason. A link that was not checked (emitted as "junk") will have an excluded value of true and a reason code defined in excludedReason.
if (result.broken) {
console.log(result.brokenReason);
//=> HTTP_404
} else if (result.excluded) {
console.log(result.excludedReason);
//=> BLC_ROBOTS
}
Additionally, more descriptive messages are available for each reason code:
console.log(blc.BLC_ROBOTS); //=> Robots Exclusion
console.log(blc.ERRNO_ECONNRESET); //=> connection reset by peer (ECONNRESET)
console.log(blc.HTTP_404); //=> Not Found (404)
// List all
console.log(blc);
Putting it all together:
if (result.broken) {
console.log(blc[result.brokenReason]);
} else if (result.excluded) {
console.log(blc[result.excludedReason]);
}
Detailed information for each link result is provided. Check out the schema or:
console.log(result);
excludeLinksToSamePage===truerejectUnauthorized:false option to avoid UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURESiteChecker site to possibly check pages that were not linked tooptions.excludedSchemes and handle schemes not in options.acceptedSchemes as junk?options.retry405Head===trueresponse.body for erroneous sounding text (using fathom?), since an error page could be presented but still have code 200HtmlUrlChecker checks on page load (using jsdom) to include links added with JavaScript?HtmlChecker for linksFAQs
Find broken links, missing images, etc in your HTML.
The npm package broken-link-checker receives a total of 9,553 weekly downloads. As such, broken-link-checker popularity was classified as popular.
We found that broken-link-checker demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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