brök

Find broken links in text documents

Similar idea to awesome_bot, but with different output options.

Currently only supports http:// and https:// prefixed URLs

Install

Binaries for Mac and Linux are available. Add the binary to a directory in your path (such as /usr/local/bin).

Cabal

If you have cabal installed:

cabal install brok

Make sure you run cabal update if you haven't run it recently.

Building

Requirements: Stack

The following command will build brök and then install it in ~/.local/bin:

stack build && stack install

Usage

Basic Usage

Check all links in a single text file:

brok test.md

Or in multiple files:

brok test.md links.tex

If you're using this as part of a test suite, you probably only need the errors:

brok text.md links.tex > /dev/null

Options

Cache

By default brök will cache successes for a day in a .brokdb file. It will always recheck errors.

If you want to adjust the cache length, you can enter the number of seconds after which the cache invalidates:

# cache for a week
brok --cache 604800 test.md links.tex

If you want to avoid creating the .brokdb file or ignore the cache entirely you can use the --no-cache option:

# do not cache results
# and don't use previously generated cache
brok --no-cache test.md links.tex

Ignore URLs

You can tell brök to ignore URLs with specified prefixes:

# ignore facebook and amazon URLS
brok --ignore "http://facebook.com" "http://amazon.com" test.md links.tex

Interval

By default brök waits for 100ms between URL checks. You can change the delay:

# wait for 1 second between checks
brok --interval 1000 test.md links.tex

Only Show Failures

If you want to see what's going on, but you're not interested in successes, then you can use the --only-failures option:

# see what's going on, but only show failures
brok --only-failures test.md links.tex

If you're using brök as part of a script then you should redirect stdout.

Colour Output

By default the output uses bash colour codes. You can turn this off using the --no-color setting.

Git Pre-Commit Hook

If you want to check all the links in your Git repo are valid before being able to commit then add something like the following to .git/hooks/pre-commit.

bash

#! /bin/bash

# cache for 1 week
# use find to check all *.md files
# only show errors (if there are any)
brok --cache 604800 $(find . -type f -name "*.md") > /dev/null

zsh

#! /bin/zsh

# cache for 1 week
# using a zsh glob to check all *.md files
# only show errors (if there are any)
brok --cache 604800 */**/*.md > /dev/null