From: Curt Sampson <cjs@...>
Date: 2005-01-24T17:07:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Web Testing in Ruby

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Jim Weirich wrote:

> But I'm running Linux at home and a non-IE solution would be great.  Have you
> considered writing a ruby-based browser skeleton?  Just enough browser to
> request web pages and give information to your browser controller software.
> Actually rendering wouldn't be necessary (I think). It would be quite useful.

I've got a simple little framework that I use for testing my web-based
application. I originally hacked it together for testing some Java
servlets, but since then it's also been used on a ruby website and is
currently testing a PHP website.

It sends HTTP requests to a server and pulls back the result, so it can
be used for testing anything served by a web server. I suspect it's rather
similar to webunit (http://www.xpenguin.biz/download/webunit/index-en.html).

A bunch of the code I use is not in this framework itself, but is in the
abstract testcase from which my concrete testcases inherit. I don't know
how much I should move up; some if it is pretty application-specific.

But here's a not untypical test, and its support routine:

     def test_logout
         send_request('/ID0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef') # logs in user
 	assert_image("logo image", "images/logo")
         assert_page_match("user name", %r|Welcome #{user_name}|)
         assert_link('Options', 'Options', 'user_setting.php')
         assert_link('Logout', 'Logout', 'logout.php')

         click("Logout")
         assert_link('Login', 'Login', 'login.php')
         assert_link('Register', 'Register', 'page/register')
     end

     def click(link_text)
         xpath = '/html//'
         # XXX Quick hack - what made xpath unhappy about the HTML thing?
         xpath = '//'
         new_request = response.get_request_from_link(link_text, xpath)
         if (new_request.nil?)
             message = "No A tag enclosing "#{link_text}" found. Text present:"
             response.get_text(xpath + 'a').each { |text|
                 message += "n    " + text
             }
             fail(make_assert_failure_message(message))
         end
         @request = new_request
         send_request
     end

You can find it as the "test-httpweb" project on rubyforge; it requires
xpath and html-parser. Not really documented or anything, but feel free
to play around with it a bit and send me e-mail if you want help.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974   http://www.NetBSD.org
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