Report more-helpful message for *No p element in scope but a p end tag seen*

[evanorsouw]

When checking the site whitemagic.it the following error is reported;

Error: No p element in scope but a p end tag seen.
From line 117, column 17; to line 117, column 20

↩

It appears this is an invalid error.

[sideshowbarker]

Please post the source of a document or document fragment that causes this error to be emitted

Mostly likely this is reported because the document has something like this:

<p>
  <ul>
  …
  </ul>
</p>

In that case what that document really looks like, as seen by an HTML parser, is this:

<p></p>
  <ul>
  …
  </ul>
</p>

That’s because, the way HTML works is, a <ul> start tag implies a </p> close tag for any open p elements.

[cvrebert]

I feel like a FAQ for "p was implicitly closed by open tag of element disallowed by p's content model, thus making the explicit p close tag unmatched" is merited at this point. It seems to come up frequently on the issue tracker. Maybe with a link to other linter(s) that give more comprehensible error messages in that case.

[evanorsouw]

Chris, you hit the spot right on. <p><ul></ul></p> is exactly what the html looks like.
I guess there is a lot of html legacy at play, so I am fine with your explanation.
Your suggestion to somehow improve the error message seems valid to prevent wasting time in the future as much as possible.
Thx for the swift response.

[cvrebert]

Erm, Michael was the one who diagnosed your problem.

[evanorsouw]

ah yeah, my bad, thanks michael.

[kdlogen]

Hi there! I also encountered an error during validation related to the

element. I received the same error with the following structure:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="">
<head>
  <title>abc</title>
</head>
<body>
  <p>
    <p>
    </p>
  </p>
</body>
</html>

I used this validator to test the content: https://validator.w3.org/nu/#textarea

I also tested the resulting DOM structure in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. In all cases, the browsers automatically inserted missing start/end tags, modifying the structure. Additionally, Firefox showed an error for the last </p> tag in "View source" mode.

Results in browsers

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="">
<head>
  <title>abc</title>
</head>
<body>
  <p></p>
    <p></p>
  <p></p>
</body>
</html>

According to the p element documentation, when a new <p> tag appears inside an open <p>, the first one is automatically closed. This automatic closing causes the second </p> to generate an error during validation.

I wanted to share this here in case it helps someone else encountering the same issue.