Railsify!

Http Test

Filed under Testing
Developed by Peter Marklund (peter_marklund)
= Http Test
A plugin for HTML validation and link checking in Rails
functional and integration tests. In addition you can run
the HTML and link tests against a production or staging server over HTTP.

== Installation
For some reason the script/plugin HTTP fetcher fails to download the file
lib/http_test.rb in the plugin. A workaround is to use the -o switch:

  ruby script/plugin install -o http://svn.marklunds.com/plugins/http_test

Alternatively you can do:

  cd vendor/plugins
  svn export http://svn.marklunds.com/plugins/http_test

That way you get an export (without .svn directories) instead of a checkout.

== Usage
- Add validation to your controller or integration tests:

  get :some_action
  assert_response :success
  # The following validates using all three validators: tidy, w3c, xmllint
  # To use a specific validator, use one of assert_tidy, assert_w3c, and
  # assert_xmllint.
  assert_validates 

- Validate all requests in your controller and integration tests by
  adding these lines to your RAILS_ROOT/test/test_helper.rb file:

  ApplicationController.validate_all = true
  ApplicationController.validators = [:tidy, :w3c]

- Check for broken URLs (URLs that don't resolve to a route, a controller, and an action)
  in your links, images, forms, and redirects. Works both in your controller and integration
  tests. Add these lines to your RAILS_ROOT/test/test_helper.rb file:
  
  ApplicationController.check_urls = true
  ApplicationController.check_redirects = true

- Follow links in your controller or integration tests:

    include Http::Test::UrlSelector

    def clicks_around
      page_url = request.request_uri
      anchor_urls.reject { |url| external_http?(url) || skip_url?(url) || url == page_url }.
        reject { |url| url =~ /(logout|signout)/ }.uniq.each do |url|

        get url
        assert(@response.redirect? || @response.success?,
          "Invalid response code #{@response.response_code} for url #{url}")
      end
    end

- Use the link validator to validate your staging or production server over HTTP:

./vendor/plugins/http_test/script/validate http://my.blog.com --validators tidy,xmllint

- Configuration options for your tests

Here is a list of configuration options to use in test/test_helper.rb:

  # # Validates all controller and integration test requests if set to true:
  # ApplicationController.validate_all = true # Default: false.
  # ApplicationController.validators = [:tidy, :w3c, :xmllint] # Default: [:tidy]. Which validators to use.
  # # A list of regular expressions for Tidy warnings to ignore:
  # Http::Test::Validator.tidy_ignore_list = [/<table> lacks "summary" attribute/] # Default: [].
  # # Set the URL of a locally installed W3C validator here:
  # Http::Test::Validator.w3c_url = "http://localhost/validator/htdocs/check" # Default: "http://validator.w3.org/check"
  # Http::Test::Validator.w3c_show_source = "0" # Default: "1". Whether to list HTML document in the W3C report
  # ApplicationController.check_urls = true # Default: false. Whether to check URLs in all links
  # ApplicationController.check_redirects = true # Default: false. Whether to check URLs in all redirects

== Validators and Dependencies
To use Tidy for HTML validation you need the rails_tidy plugin.
The xmllint validation option requires xmllint to
be available on the command line. The xmllint validator is part of
libxml2. The W3C validator has no dependencies since we access it via
the web. To install the W3C validator locally (highly recommended), see
those instructions:

  http://validator.w3.org/docs/install.html

I recommend using both the tidy and W3C validators (or xmllint if for some reason you can't use
the W3C validator). Tidy gives useful warnings for example about empty tags,
but it misses obvious validation failures such as lack of HTML
quoting or unclosed tags. The W3C validator offers much better reports for debugging than
xmllint. The last generated W3C report will be available at /tmp/w3c_last_response.html
so that you can bring it up in your browser for debugging.

The xmllint validator will use the XHTML 1.0 strict DTD by default. To specify a different DTD,
have the Http::Test::Validator.dtd(document) method return the path to your DTD file. If you 
prefer to use the DTD referenced in the DOCTYPE declaration (can be very slow) then have the dtd
method return the string "doctype".

If you are using a catch-all route for 404:s, then you need to implement the method
Http::Test::UrlChecker#check_not_404(url, params) and throw an exception if that route is invoked.

There are methods such as skip_url?(url) and should_validate? that you can override to control
which pages get validated and which URLs get checked.

== Tests
If you make changes to this plugin, remember to run the tests with rake. The tests
require the rails_tidy and mocha plugins as well as xmllint.

== Author
Peter Marklund (http://marklunds.com)

== License
Licensed under the same terms as Ruby on Rails.
Last updated: September 23, 2007 15:54
Installing this Plugin

Http Test
