Dead Link Checker

A simple and efficient Node.js script to recursively check for dead links on a webpage. This script validates both internal and external links, with configurable concurrency and delay to control the load on servers.

Features

• Recursive Link Checking: Crawls and checks all links on the given webpage, including internal and external links.
• Concurrency Control: Configure the number of simultaneous requests for faster or slower processing.
• Delay Between Requests: Add delays between requests to avoid overwhelming servers.
• Verbose Output: View detailed information about each link checked.
• Excludes Non-HTTP Links: Skips invalid URLs like mailto:, javascript:, and fragment links (#section).

Requirements

• Node.js 20.x or later

Installation

No need to install - just call directly from your github action or CLI using npx:

npx dead-link-checker <URL> [options]

Options

• -v: Enable verbose mode. Displays all checked links and their status codes.
• --concurrent=<number>: Set the number of concurrent requests (default: 20).
• --delay=<milliseconds>: Set the delay between requests in milliseconds (default: 10).

Excluded Links

The script skips the following types of links:

• mailto: email links
• javascript: links
• Empty links (<a href=""></a>)
• Fragment-only links (<a href="#section"></a>)

How It Works

1. The script fetches the provided URL and parses all links using the JSDOM library.
2. Each link is validated using the Node.js fetch API.
3. Internal links are recursively added to the queue for further checking.
4. External links are checked only once and not followed recursively.
5. Links with errors (e.g., 404 Not Found) are reported in the summary.

License

This script is released under the MIT License. Feel free to modify and use it as you see fit.

Author

Developed by Joshua Melville (jthrilly) using Claude and ChatGPT.