[DAS2] working das validator

[Andrew Dalke]

I have a running validator at

http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/


I've only tested it with SOURCES document but there's little
that would fail with the others.

I had planned to get this up a couple days ago but I've been
distracted learning more about Javascript and a couple of Javascript
libraries.  I used Mochikit to make the interactivity you see
there, and I have some ideas about how to use Dojo -- but not
for a couple of weeks.

The code goes through the following validation steps:

  - TODO - handle if the URL is not fetchable and handle timeouts
  - check that the content-type agrees with the document type
  - check that it's well-formed XML; report error where not
  - check that the root element matches the document type
  - check that it passed the Relax-NG validation;
  - report the id and href fields which are empty strings
  - report if any date fields are not iso dates

There are many more checks I could add.  They are easy now
that the scaffold is there.

I'm going to work on the next draft now.

After that I'll get back to the validator.  I want to add
hyperlinks on fields which are links, and I have an idea of
how to add a "SEARCH" button next to the query urls which
creates a popup where you can fill in the different fields
before doing the search.

Budget-wise I'm not sure how to charge the last few days
of work as it was a "wouldn't it be neat if" project rather
than something really needed.  It is neat though ...

					Andrew
					dalke at dalkescientific.com