<property name="context">{/doc/acs-core-docs {Documentation}} {Automated Testing}</property>
<property name="doc(title)">Automated Testing</property>
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<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="automated-testing-best-practices" id="automated-testing-best-practices"></a>Automated Testing</h2></div></div></div><div class="authorblurb">
<p>By <a class="ulink" href="mailto:davis\@xarg.net" target="_top">Jeff Davis</a>
</p>
OpenACS docs are written by the named authors, and may be edited by
OpenACS documentation staff.</div><p>Best practices in writing OpenACS automated tests</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc;">
<li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Special characters in Tcl. </b> Try strings
starting with a <code class="computeroutput">-Bad</code> and
strings containing <code class="computeroutput">[BAD]</code>,
<code class="computeroutput">{</code>, <code class="computeroutput">\077</code>, and <code class="computeroutput">$Bad</code>. For user input, <code class="computeroutput">[BAD]</code> should never be evaluated,
<code class="computeroutput">\077</code> should not be turned into
a <code class="computeroutput">?</code> and <code class="computeroutput">$Bad</code> should not be interpolated. The string
<code class="computeroutput">-Bad [BAD] \077 { $Bad</code> should
be valid user input, should pass through the system unaltered, and
if it isn't that's a bug.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Quoting issues. </b>Put some html in plain text
fields and make sure the result is properly quoted anywhere it
shows up (I use "&lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt;" usually). Look out
especially for quoting errors in the context bar and in round trips
via an edit form. For fields that disallow html tags you can use
<code class="computeroutput">&amp;amp;</code> to check that the
field is quoted properly. If it is not displayed as <code class="computeroutput">&amp;amp;</code> then the quoting for the field is
incorrect. (It's not clear whether this should be considered an
error but given that data for text fields can come from various
sources if it's text it should be properly quoted and we should not
rely on input validation to prevent XSS security holes.)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Whitespace input. </b>Check that whitespace is
not considered valid input for a field if it does not make sense.
For example, the subject of a forum post is used to construct a
link and if it is " " it will have a link of <code class="computeroutput">&lt;a href="..."&gt; &lt;/a&gt;</code> which would
not be clickable if whitespace was allowed as a valid input.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Doubleclick. </b> Make sure that if you submit a
form, use the back button, and submit again that the behavior is
reasonable (correct behavior depends on what the form is for, but a
server error is not reasonable).</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Duplicate names. </b> Make sure that if a
duplicate name is entered that there is a reasonable error rather
than a server error. Check for insert, move, copy, and rename.</p></li>
</ul></div><div class="cvstag">($Id: auto-testing.xml,v 1.3 2006/07/17
05:38:37 torbenb Exp $)</div>
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