Re: [Httpunit-develop] WebForm and getTableCellWithID

[Sam J. <ga...@yh...>]

Pardon me for not hving read the HTML spec in detail.  I don't have any 
html coders except myself.  I wasn't aware that people had to be 
familiar with every aspect of the HTML spec in order to use it.  I'm 
sure that it's use would not be as widespread as it is if everyone had 
to know the spec off by heart.

Personally I am trying to write some code that automates the creation of 
test cases and support classes directly from html templates.  You can 
read about it in a previous mail to this list.

A problem that I have, along with others, is that changes in html layout 
break our tests, forcing re-writes of tests whenever the GUI changes - 
very inefficient.  Excuse me while I scream in frustration at the fact 
that I must specify the row and column location of something in a table, 
when all I want to do is get the set of cells that correspond to the 
results of a query made during the submission of the form.  

I am currently using a system that queries RDF triples.  I get back 
lists of subjects, predicates and objects.  If I am testing a query 
where I ask for all the triples where the subject is "John" it would be 
very helpful to be able to confirm that all the triples displayed 
include the subject "John".  Thus setting id="SUBJECT" on every cell 
that is displaying a subject allows me to check that the result is 
correct without having to rewrite my test every time I, or some html 
designer, changes the layout of my table.

I would be very interested if you had any suggestions about how to 
achieve this without setting the id in multiple cells to the same value.

CHEERS> SAM

Russell Gold wrote:

> On Wednesday, December 25, 2002, at 12:42 AM, Sam Joseph wrote:
>
> Excuse me while I scream in frustration. Please show your HTML coders 
> the following information from the specification:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#adef-id> which reads in 
> part:
> *
> id = /_name_/ _[CS]_
> *This attribute assigns a name to an element. This name must be unique 
> in a document.
>
> You are not supposed to *have* many cells with the same ID. It defeats 
> the whole purpose of the ID attribute.
>