Re: [Perlunit-devel] Greetings

[Piers C. <pdc...@bo...>]

Matthias Ferber <mf...@hi...> writes:

> On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Adam Spiers wrote:
>> > > It also occurred to me that a "nice-to-have" would be a verbose option
>> > > where it displays the name of each test and the TestCase class as it
>> > > progresses.  
>> > 
>> > Again, that's something to hang off the runner, and it definitely
>> > looks possible.
>> 
>> Yep.  Can you give us an example of the output you'd like to see?  (Or
>> a patch ;-)
>
> Yeah, sure.  I hadn't thought it through in detail but it shouldn't be
> hard to work up a simple patch.  If I find time to do that, what should I
> do with it exactly?  Send diffs?

Diffs would be good. If you start making more and we like them I'll
see about giving you write access to the CVS repository.

>>   sub test_case {
>>     my $self = shift;
>>     ...
>>     $self->print('some debugging\n');
>>     ...
>>   }
>> 
>> and the debugging will only appear if the test case fails.  This is
>> currently only supported by TestRunner.pm.  Maybe we should think of
>> a better name than print().
>
> This sounds pretty cool.  What's the thinking behind making $self->print() 
> output only show up when tests fail?  I'm guessing that the idea is that
> you can print details of what's going on in the test so that when the test
> fails you have to do less digging to find the problem, but it doesn't
> clutter up the screen when the test succeeds.  

Yup. Remember that the print message gets sent to the
Listener/TestRunner. If you want a more verbose style you can easily
(must check that statement) subclass the TestRunner and change that
behaviour. 

> If that's correct I think it's great. I wrote some tests in JUnit
> the other day where I could have really used this feature: I had to
> do a bunch of messing around with StringBuffers to cram a whole lot
> of data into the failure message.
>
> How about $self->print_on_fail()?

Nope. Deciding when/whether to print the message is a function of the
runner not of the testcase. C<$self->send_diagnostic(...)> anybody?
Hmm...

>> > And Test::Unit::Web would be nice, and something to do mock objects,
>> > and...
>
> Hmm... I'm not sure what Test::Unit::Web is meant to be, but... it
> so happens that my first trial use of PerlUnit has been to do some
> stock web site testing. We host a few hundred web sites, the
> majority of which are functionally identical but the rest of which
> differ to varying degrees, so I took pains to make the code general
> and reusable. If that's what Test::Unit::Web would be about, my base
> class could possibly make a decent starting point. It tests that a
> page loads successfully within a customizable number of seconds, and
> provides some facilities for testing the contents of the page. More
> could easily be added. Anyone interested?

Ooh, yes please. That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking of. 

-- 
Piers

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
    possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
         -- Jane Austen?