Unit testing Using XML/XSLT for Test harness Generation

[RayU65]

While checking on Joomla! latest updates. I noticed that Unit Testing efforts are getting going. I thought It a good idea to share my resent university project with you in the hope that it helps.

I chose for my project to investigate the separation of unit test data from the test harness used to run it. To do this I proposed using XML to structure and present the Unit test data and then used XSLT to generate the unit test harness. For my project I used Joomla! 1.5 as my web site shell and wrote my project as a component. Given the time available and my total lack of Joomla! experience at the time the project is very basic but did prove the point that writing XML unit tests can be done.

What does this give you? Test harness language/Framework independence. define your unit tests in XML using an XSD to validate and then write an XSLT transform to generate the test harness. This way you only need to redefine the test harness generation and don't need to rewrite unit tests if the Framework changes or the language!

This could be implemented for Joomla! using an editor to write XML directly to start with. Xalan and Xerces to process the XML & XSLT

If anyone is interested in this I can submit my basic XML unit test example and XSD and PHP XSLT files (if someone tells me where to send them)

regards

[ircmaxell]

Upload the zip here... I'm curious to see how you defined the logic... :-)

[RayU65]

Ok sorry only got time tonight for the bare bones. Hope it's enough.

Regards