New plugin!

script/plugin install svn://caboo.se/plugins/court3nay/spider_test

SpiderTest

SpiderTest is an automated integration-testing script that iterates over every page in your application. It performs a few valuable tasks for you:

• parses the html of every page, so if you have invalid html, you will be warned.
• finds every link to within your site and follows it, whether static or dynamic.
• finds every Ajax.Updater link and follows it.
• finds every form and tries to submit it, filling in values where possible.

This is helpful in determining:

• missing static pages (.html)
• bad routing
• poor code coverage - forgot to test a file? Don't wait for a user to find it.
• simple fuzzing of form values.
• automated testing of form paths. Often we have forms which point to incorrect locations, and up until now this has been impossible to test in an automated fashion or without being strongly coupled to your code.

USAGE

$ script/plugin install spider_tester
$ script/generate integration_test spider_test

Load up the test/integration/spider_test.rb and make it look something like this, replacing your own implementation details where appropriate. You'll probably want to load all of your fixtures.

require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../test_helper"

class SpiderTest < ActionController::IntegrationTest
  fixtures :users, :roles, :images, :categories
  include SpiderIntegrator

  def test_spider
    get '/'
    assert_response :success

    spider(@response.body, '/')
  end

end

If you require a login for your app, you'll need to specifically log in. I do it like:

require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../test_helper"

class SpiderTest < ActionController::IntegrationTest
  fixtures :users, :roles, :images, :categories
  include SpiderIntegrator

  def test_spider
    get '/sessions/new'
    assert_response :success
    post '/sessions/create', :login => 'admin', :password => 'test'
    assert session[:user]
    assert_response :redirect
    assert_redirected_to '/'
    follow_redirect!

    spider(@response.body, '/')
  end

end

Todo:

• better, aka more random, fuzzing. currently, I check the fieldname and change the data types accordingly. It'd be good to have some more advanced algorithm in here

• specify which actions to ignore you can modify this by editing the plugin and setting @visitedurls and @visitedforms but this should be more easily settable.

• use hpricot instead of html::document no clue, really, but I hear hpricot is faster.

• better capturing of errors instead of dying each time there's an error, store them all up so the user can fix 'em all at once.

*image from tj:fluffy:online @ flickr