Idea
acceptance testing+issues
Given that
- as we near 1.0, the behavior of Wagn is reaching a milestone of completeness and correctness
- the current test suite is essential but somewhat disorganized and patchy
- the codebase is working well but mis-architected in places, and large sections are in need of major refactoring to support our long-term vision
We should create a suite of high-level acceptance tests that captures and codifies this current behavior, which we can work against during subsequent architectural refactorings.
acceptance testing+solution
As of early 2009 the combination of Cucumber and Webrat is gaining acceptance as a best-practice in acceptance testing for Rails applications. Cucumber an english-like syntax and more importantly a structure for thinking about the behavior of the application. Webrat provides a mechanism for specifying interactions with the application at a high level, and can be connected to Selenium for testing ajax functionality that requires real browser interaction.
On a technical note, Cucumber uses "step definitions" written in ruby to process the feature specs written in cucumber syntax. Given the thematic conistency of working with cards in wagn, I think that a wide range feature behavior can be specified with a fairly small number of step definitions, ie. the setup will be compact.
My estimate for developing a reasonably complete acceptance test suite is 3 developer days for setup (step definitions, initial tests, ajax/selenium setup), and 4-6 additional developer days for completing the spec. The latter part would be best done as pair coding in a sprint.
I would love to see this happen sometime in 2009 :)
acceptance testing+example
this is a braindump of features and types of scenarios that should be tested, ie high level list of tests that we need.
FEATURES
Accounts
sign up
sign in
...
Basic Editing
create
delete
edit
name
type
content
history
autosave
References
inclusions
views: open,closed,naked,etc.
links
Editing included cards
create
delete
edit
name
type
content
Important Cardtypes
Cardtype
Search
Pointers (autocomplete specs, etc.)
Images & Files
Templating
*rforms
*tforms
multi-edit
create
delete
edit
Permissions
Combinations
references and search (common patterns)
templated searches
other auto and phantom cards
acceptance testing+discussed in support tickets
acceptance testing+relevant user stories