• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

Unit Testing the page validation errors

 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 167
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hi All,

I'm developing a set of unit/integration tests using HttpUnit. So far went fine checking the functionality of the system. However, I'm facing the problem for checking the validation errors.

Scenario is like this
a) On a page , we enter few values in the form and click on submit.
b) If the values entered pass through validations (Client Side) then
it is pushed to the servlet for further processing.
So far, on happy path and other alternative paths, where in input values pass the validation is working fine.

c) Now I need to provide some wrong data and the input page should be returned back saying asking to correct the values.

Implementation of the point "C" is not yet finalized, but we assume that error messages are displayed beside the corresponding form elements with some red color.

Now the challenge I have here is to parse the response and assert that proper error messages are displayed for the wrong data.


The approach, which I'm thinking is to parse the response (WebResponse) and make DOM tree, since basically the response is a html. Once this is done, I need to handle each of these elements separately. I tried to use JDOM but failed, as the response I may get back may not be well formed. So I need to make a similar API like JDOM or some thing else to accomplish this. I get a feeling that, I'm trying to reach my nose from the other direction round back my head. Can some one suggest me a better solution here.

By the way, we are permitted to use JUnit and HttpUnit only.
 
Schandha Ravi
Ranch Hand
Posts: 167
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hello All,

Can some one throw some light on my problem.

My basic question is "How to" unit test page level, field level validations.

Say, if I enter date of birth in a wrong format the client side validation would throw me an error. How can I ensure that it is happening through an automated tests. Please suggest some frameworks that I can use to test in generic way for Plain HTML, XML, JSP and JSF based pages. I found different frameworks for different technologies, but I'm looking for some generic framework (which can be tweaked) to solve my issue.
 
author
Posts: 11962
5
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Originally posted by Schandha Ravi:
Say, if I enter date of birth in a wrong format the client side validation would throw me an error. How can I ensure that it is happening through an automated tests. Please suggest some frameworks that I can use to test in generic way for Plain HTML, XML, JSP and JSF based pages. I found different frameworks for different technologies, but I'm looking for some generic framework (which can be tweaked) to solve my issue.


The only generic framework I can think of for something like this would be JUnit. After all, it is a generic test framework. JSP and JSF as technologies are worlds apart and therefore you're unlikely to find a single framework that supports both, other than by deploying the whole application to a web container and pointing a tool such as HttpUnit at the running application.

Earlier you said that you tried parsing the HTML as XML:

Originally posted by Schandha Ravi:
I tried to use JDOM but failed, as the response I may get back may not be well formed.


What if you'd first run the response through JTidy? I've done that in the past and it worked alright for me.
 
Schandha Ravi
Ranch Hand
Posts: 167
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Thanks Lasse,

I believe I may try JTidy to check my problem.
 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 194
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Here's how I dealt with this ine one of my Acceptance Tests, using JWebUnit, DbUnit, and JUnit.

"tester" is simple WebTester from JWebUnit (needed since I couldn't use their base class for my test case)


This is slightly more frail than i would like as it hard codes the exact error message.... Now if the exact wording is a formal requirement and isn't likely to change, that might be acceptable. For me I'm not too happy with it and I've been playing with alternatives, but nothing has struck be a sufficiently better yet. (Though I'm leaning towards simply searching for an element with id="error-email") ... That would be flexible against wording changes and styling changes.
 
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic