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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>
<strong>Special characters in Tcl. </strong> 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 { $Bad</code> should
be valid user input, should pass through the system unaltered, and
if it isn't that's a bug.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<strong>Quoting issues. </strong>Put some html in
plain text fields and make sure the result is properly quoted
anywhere it shows up (I use "<b>bold</b>"
usually). Look out especially for quoting errors in the context bar
and in round trips via an edit form. For fields that disallow html
tags you can use <code class="computeroutput">&amp;</code> to
check that the field is quoted properly. If it is not displayed as
<code class="computeroutput">&amp;</code> then the quoting for
the field is incorrect. (It's not clear whether this should be
considered an error but given that data for text fields can come
from various sources if it's text it should be properly quoted
and we should not rely on input validation to prevent XSS security
holes.)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<strong>Whitespace input. </strong>Check that
whitespace is not considered valid input for a field if it does not
make sense. For example, the subject of a forum post is used to
construct a link and if it is " " it will have a link of
<code class="computeroutput"><a href="...">
</a></code> which would not be clickable if whitespace was
allowed as a valid input.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<strong>Double-click. </strong> Make sure that if
you submit a form, use the back button, and submit again that the
behavior is reasonable (correct behavior depends on what the form
is for, but a server error is not reasonable).</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<strong>Duplicate names. </strong> Make sure that if
a duplicate name is entered that there is a reasonable error rather
than a server error. Check for insert, move, copy, and rename.</p></li>
</ul></div><div class="cvstag">($‌Id: auto-testing.xml,v 1.6 2024/09/11
06:15:47 gustafn Exp $)</div>
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