node.js, css validation, w3c banned me? - css

Question

I apologize in advance for what I write through a translator, I am very bad at English.
I was faced with the following problem: I need to perform validation css files. To this end, I decided to use the NPM package w3c-css, first it worked, but then start giving "connected etimedout", in the course of research, I noticed that through the browser and the validator stops working.
Sniffer log at start of my script: link (<10 rep :( )
My code:
gulp.task('css', function() {
gulp.src('dev/sass/*.scss')
.pipe(through2.obj(function(file, enc, cb){
w3c_css.validate({text: file.contents.toString('utf8')}, function(err, data) {
if(err) {
// an error happened
console.error(err);
} else {
// validation errors
console.log('validation errors', data.errors);
// validation warnings
console.log('validation warnings', data.warnings);
}
});
cb(null, file);
}))
.pipe(gulp.dest('build/'));
});
What is the reason? It must be some mistake, or I block due to too frequent requests and it does not change? Maybe there is some other way to check the css files?
Thx!

Answer 1

From the "About" page of the CSS validation service of the W3C:
Can I build an application upon this validator? Is there an API?
Yes, and yes. The CSS Validator has a (RESTful) SOAP interface which should make it reasonably easy to build applications (Web or otherwise) upon it. Good manners and respectful usage of shared resources are of course customary: make sure your applications sleep() between calls to the validator, or install and run your own instance of the validator.
So yes, it seems you have been banned.
I don't know how to make a gulp task to be called from time to time. You may mount a local version of the CSS Validator webservice and editing the w3c-css package to point to your own server.

Answer 2

Make sure that your script will sleep for at least 1 second between requests.
From the manual:
Note: If you wish to call the validator programmatically for a batch
of documents, please make sure that your script will sleep for at
least 1 second between requests. The CSS Validation service is a free,
public service for all, your respect is appreciated. thanks.
To validate multiple links, use async + setTimeout or any related way to pause between the requests:
'use strict';
var async = require('async');
var validator = require('w3c-css');
var hrefs = [
'http://google.com',
'https://developer.mozilla.org',
'http://www.microsoft.com/'];
async.eachSeries(hrefs, function(href, next) {
validator.validate(href, function(err, data) {
// { process err, data.errors & data.warnings }
// sleep for 1.5 seconds between the requests
setTimeout(function() { next(err); }, 1500);
});
}, function(err) {
if(err) {
console.log('Failed to process an url', err);
} else {
console.log('All urls have been processed successfully');
}
});
EDIT:
To mitigate this issue:
Added some comments and an example.
Placed setTimeout right into the gulp-w3c-css plugin.