Input Validation

Input Validation Skill

🔴 AI FIRST Quality Principle

Apply the AI FIRST principle: never accept first-pass quality. Minimum 2 iterations. Read all output, improve every section. No shortcuts.

Purpose

Defines input validation and sanitization patterns for preventing security vulnerabilities and ensuring data integrity.

Core Principles

1. Validate all input — Never trust user-supplied data
2. Allowlist over denylist — Define what IS allowed
3. Validate on server-side — Client-side validation is UX only
4. Encode output — Context-appropriate encoding
5. Fail securely — Reject invalid input with safe defaults

HTML/Static Site Validation

• Sanitize any user-generated content before rendering
• Use textContent instead of innerHTML when possible
• Escape HTML entities (&, <, >, ", ')
• Validate URL inputs (protocol allowlist: https only)
• Use Content Security Policy (CSP) headers

XSS Prevention

// Use DOMPurify or built-in escaping
function escapeHtml(text) {
  const div = document.createElement('div');
  div.textContent = text;
  return div.innerHTML;
}

JSON Schema Validation

• Validate API response data against schemas
• Use AJV for JSON Schema validation
• Define strict schemas for all data structures

URL Validation

• Allowlist protocols (https only)
• Validate domain against known sources
• Sanitize query parameters
• Prevent open redirect vulnerabilities

ISO 27001 Mapping

• A.8.26 — Application security requirements
• A.8.28 — Secure coding

Related Policies

• Secure Development Policy