Static validation of dynamically generated HTML documents based on abstract parsing and semantic processing

Abstract

Abstract parsing is a static-analysis technique for a program that, given a reference LR(k) context-free grammar, statically checks whether or not every dynamically generated string output by the program conforms to the grammar. The technique operates by applying an LR(k) parser for the reference language to data-flow equations extracted from the program, immediately parsing all the possible string outputs to validate their syntactic well-formedness. In this paper, we extend abstract parsing to do semantic-attribute processing and apply this extension to statically verify that HTML documents generated by JSP or PHP are always valid according to the HTML DTD. This application is necessary because the HTML DTD cannot be fully described as an LR(k) grammar. We completely define the HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD in an attributed LALR(1) grammar, carry out experiments for selected real-world JSP and PHP applications, and expose numerous HTML validation errors in the applications. In the process, we experimentally show that semantic properties defined by attribute grammars can also be verified using our technique. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.