security.txt validator

How does it work

This package can validate security.txt file either by providing

• the file contents as a string by calling Spaze\SecurityTxt\Parser\SecurityTxtParser::parseString()
• a hostname like example.com to Spaze\SecurityTxt\Parser\SecurityTxtParser::parseHost()
• a URL like https://example.com/ to Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHost::check()

Each of the options above will call preceding method and add more validations which are only possible in that particular case.

There's also a command line script in bin which uses Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHostCli::check() mostly just to add command line output to Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHost::check().

If you want to decouple fetching the security.txt file and parsing it, there's also a possibility to pass a SecurityTxtFetchResult object to Spaze\SecurityTxt\Parser\SecurityTxtParser::parseFetchResult().

How to use it

Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHost::check() is probably what you'd want to use as it provides the mos comprehensive checks, can pass a URL, not just a hostname, and also supports callbacks. It accepts these parameters:

string $url

A URL where the file will be looked for, you can pass just for example https://example.com, no need to use the full path to the security.txt file, because only the hostname of the URL will be used for further checks

?int $expiresWarningThreshold = null

The validator will start throwing warnings if the file expires soon, and you can say what "soon" means by specifying the number of days here

bool $strictMode = false

If you enable strict mode, then the file will be considered invalid, meaning SecurityTxtCheckHostResult::isValid() will return false even when there are only warnings, with strict mode disabled, the file with only warnings would still be valid and SecurityTxtCheckHostResult::isValid() would return true

bool $noIpv6 = false

Because some environments do not support IPv6, looking at you GitHub Actions

Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHost::check() returns a Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHostResult object with some obvious and less obvious properties. The less obvious ones can be obtained with the following methods. All of them return an array of SecurityTxtSpecViolation descendants.

getFetchErrors()

Returns list<SecurityTxtSpecViolation> and contains errors encountered when fetching the file from a server. For example but not limited to:

• When the content type or charset is wrong
• When the URL scheme is not HTTPS

getFetchWarnings()

Also returns list<SecurityTxtSpecViolation> and has warnings when fetching the file, like for example but not limited to:

• When the files at /security.txt and /.well-known/security.txt differ
• When /security.txt does not redirect to /.well-known/security.txt

getLineErrors()

Returns array<int, list<SecurityTxtSpecViolation>> where the array int key is the line number. Contains errors discovered when parsing and validating the contents of the security.txt file. These errors are produced by any class that implements the FieldProcessor interface. The errors include but are not limited to:

• When a field uses incorrect separators
• When a field value is not URL or the URL doesn't use https:// scheme

getLineWarnings()

Also returns array<int, list<SecurityTxtSpecViolation>> where the array int key is the line number. Contains warnings generated by any class that implements the FieldProcessor interface, when parsing and validating the contents of the security.txt file. These warnings include but are not limited to:

• When the Expires field's value is too far into the future

getFileErrors()

Returns list<SecurityTxtSpecViolation>, the list contains file-level errors which cannot be paired with any single line. These error are generated by FieldValidator child classes, and include:

• When mandatory fields like Contact or Expires are missing

getFileWarnings()

Returns list<SecurityTxtSpecViolation>, the list contains file-level warnings that cannot be paired with any single line. These warnings are generated by FieldValidator child classes, and include for example:

• When the file is signed, but there's no Canonical field

Callbacks

SecurityTxtCheckHost::check() supports callbacks that can be set with SecurityTxtCheckHost::addOn*() methods. You can use them to get the parsing information in "real time", and are used for example by the bin/checksecuritytxt.php script via the \Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHostCli class to print information as soon as it is available.

JSON

The Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHostResult object can be encoded to JSON with json_encode(), and decoded back with Spaze\SecurityTxt\Check\SecurityTxtCheckHostResultFactory::createFromJson().

The other methods

Both Spaze\SecurityTxt\Parser\SecurityTxtParser::parseString() and Spaze\SecurityTxt\Parser\SecurityTxtParser::parseHost() return a Spaze\SecurityTxt\Parser\SecurityTxtParseResult object with similar methods as what's described above for SecurityTxtCheckHostResult. The result returned from parseHost() also contains Spaze\SecurityTxt\Fetcher\SecurityTxtFetchResult object.