Validating DITA input without generating output?

[chrispy-snps]

Is there a way to run the preprocessing part of the DITA-OT without generating any output, to see if there are any issues (schema, cross-references, missing files, and so on) lurking in the input files?

Conceptually, it would be an "empty" transformation, something like

dita --input map.ditamap --format none
                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I tried redirecting output to /dev/null:

dita --input map.ditamap --format dita --output /dev/null

but I get various filesystem call failures with this approach:

Attempt to copy experimentdita/iugux/product_installation/graphics/welcome.JPG to /dev/null/iugux/product_installation/graphics/welcome.JPG using NIO Channels failed due to 'failed to create the parent directory for /dev/null/iugux/product_installation/graphics/welcome.JPG'.  Falling back to streams.
     [copy] Failed to copy experimentdita/iugux/product_installation/graphics/welcome.JPG to /dev/null/iugux/product_installation/graphics/welcome.JPG due to java.nio.file.FileSystemException /dev/null/iugux/product_installation/graphics/welcome.JPG: Not a directory

Error: Fatal error during transformation using /home/user/dita-ot/plugins/org.dita.normalize/xsl/normalize.xsl: Failed to create output file file:/dev/nulliugux/preinstallation_setup/finding_your_site_identification_number.dita; SystemID: file:/home/user/dita-ot/plugins/org.dita.normalize/xsl/normalize.xsl; Line#: 91; Column#: 48

I guess I could create a custom plugin with a new transformation type that does nothing, but it would be great if there's some clever way to do this with the DITA-OT as-is.

Thanks!

[jason-fox]

Would this DITA Validator Plug-in suit your purposes?

dita -f svrl -i document.ditamap

Once the command has run, all errors and warnings are echoed to the command line

[WARN]   [/out/temp/dita/topics/comment-fixme.dita]
 Line 15: section[id="bad"] - [comment-fixme]
Found 'FIXME' comments within the <section> element - fix as requested and delete the comment.

FIXME This comment requires action

Found 0 Errors 1 Warnings

It doesn't rely on the preprocessor since the errors could be within a *.ditamap it just operates over all files within a root directory. The plugin was demonstrated as part of DITA-OT day in Berlin.

The original DITA-OT 2.x code from HERE can be found on their GitHub a maintained DITA-OT 3.x fork can be found on here

[jelovirt]

If you only want the validation and checks from preprocess, a custom transtype that only runs preprocess or preprocess2 should do it.

[chrispy-snps]

I ended up writing a Perl script that uses jing (the RelaxNG validation engine) to do this. Here's a link to the script:

ditaot_validate.pl

Because jing performs only parsing and validation, it is very fast even for large numbers of files:

Note that ditaot_validate.pl performs validation of files and directories of files; it does not follow map hierarchy or validate just the files used by a map. For that, the plugin approach described earlier would be better.

Another limitation is that jing crashes when validating DITA grammars that include the svg-d domain. I am not sure how to resolve this yet.