IIIF Validator

Validates that a URL dereferences to a valid IIIF Presentation Manifest. A small building block for Linked Data tooling that needs to tell a declared IIIF manifest apart from one that actually resolves, parses, and loads in a real viewer.

import { validateManifest } from '@lde/iiif-validator';

const verdict = await validateManifest('https://example.org/manifest.json');
if (verdict.valid) {
  // verdict.reason === 'valid-manifest'
}

validateManifest never throws; every outcome is reported as a ManifestValidation:

interface ManifestValidation {
  valid: boolean;
  reason:
    | 'valid-manifest'
    | 'timeout'
    | 'network-error'
    | 'http-error'
    | 'invalid-json'
    | 'binary-content'
    | 'not-a-manifest'
    | 'does-not-load';
}

Behaviour

• Dereference over HTTP with Accept: */*, following redirects, using the global fetch with an AbortSignal timeout (default 10 000 ms). The wildcard mirrors what real IIIF viewers send (the browser fetch default); a JSON-specific Accept would be more correct but trips up hosts that do backwards content negotiation – serving the manifest to */* while returning 404 for a JSON-specific request. Both fetch and timeoutMs are injectable via the options argument.
• Version-aware structural check. A document is manifest-shaped when the response is HTTP 2xx, the body parses as JSON, its @context references an IIIF Presentation context, and its type/@type indicates a manifest – accepting both v3 (Manifest) and v2 (sc:Manifest). The @context value may be a string, an array, or an object; all forms are handled. The version segment of the context is accepted version-agnostically.
• Viewer-load gate. Being manifest-shaped is not enough: a document can pass every structural check yet fail to load in the dominant Vault/@iiif/parser-based viewers (Mirador 4, Clover, Theseus), which eagerly upgrade every manifest to Presentation 3 and normalise the whole tree on load. A single structural slip – e.g. a null where an AnnotationPage belongs – crashes that pass, so the manifest renders in no such viewer. The validator reproduces that load path with @iiif/parser (upgrade() then normalize()); if it throws, the verdict is does-not-load. upgrade() is a no-op for v3, so this one path covers both v2 and v3. There are only two tiers – valid or invalid; cosmetic deviations that still load (a non-canonical rights URI, image/jpg instead of image/jpeg) stay valid.
• Strict failure semantics, no retries. A timeout, network error, non-2xx status, unparseable body, binary media type, missing IIIF @context, wrong type, or a document that does not load all yield valid: false with the corresponding coarse reason. There is no deep JSON Schema validation and no dependency on the hosted IIIF Presentation Validator service.

Options

interface ValidateManifestOptions {
  /** `fetch` implementation to use. Injectable for testing; defaults to the global `fetch`. */
  fetch?: typeof globalThis.fetch;
  /** Per-request timeout in milliseconds. Defaults to 10 000. */
  timeoutMs?: number;
}