NAME

HTML::Mason::Tests - Test harness for testing Mason

SYNOPSIS

 use HTML::Mason::Tests;

 my $group = HTML::Mason::Tests->new( name => 'name of group', description => 'tests something' );
 $group->add_test( name => 'foo',
                   description => 'tests foo',
                   component => <<'EOF'
 <%args>
 $foo => 1
 </%args>
 <% $foo %>
 EOF
                   expect => <<'EOF',
 1
 EOF
                 );

DESCRIPTION

This module is designed to automate as much as possible of the Mason test suite. It does tasks like write component files to disk, call them, compare the actual results to the expected results, and more. In addition, it also is capable of printing out useful information about test failures when run in verbose mode. See the ADDITIONAL RUN MODES section for more information.

It also makes sure that any given group of tests provides all the information needed to run them (test names, components and results, etc.).

Now you have no excuse for writing new tests (and that goes double for me!).

METHODS

new

Takes the following parameters:

• name (required)

  The name of the entire group of tests.

• description (required)

  What this group tests.

add_support

Takes the following parameters:

• path (required)

  The path that other components will expect this component to be reachable at. All paths are prepended with the group name. So '/bar' as a support component in the 'foo' group's ultimate path would be '/foo/bar'.

• component

  Text of the support component. This parameter must have a value unless the skip_component parameter is true.

• skip_component

  If true, then the test harness will not write a component to disk for this test.

add_test

Takes the following parameters:

• name (required)

  The name of this test.

• description (required)

  What this test is testing.

• component (required)

  Text of the component.

• path (optional)

  The path that this component should written to. As with support components, this path is prepended with the group's name. If no path is given, the value of the name parameter is used.

• call_path (optional)

  The path that should be used to call the component. If none is given, then the value is the same as the path option, if that exists, otherwise it is /<group name>/<test name>. If a value is given, it is still prepended by /<group name>/.

• call_args (optional)

  The arguments that should be passed to the component, in list or hash reference form. If none is given, no arguments are passed.

• parser_params

  This is a hash reference of parameters to be passed to the Parser->new method.

• interp_params

  This is a hash reference of parameters to be passed to the Interp->new method.

• interp

  Provide an HTML::Mason::Interp object to be used for the test.

One of the following three options is required:

• expect

  The text expected as a result of calling the component. This parameter is _not_ required when running in Create mode.

• expect_error

  A regex containing that will be matched against the error returned from the component execution.

• skip_expect

  This causes the component to be run but its output is ignored. However, if the component execution causes an error this will cause the test to fail. This is used in a few situations where it is necessary to just run a component as part the preparation for another test.

run

Run the tests in the group.

Class methods

These methods are provided since some tests may need to know these values.

base_path

The base path under which the component root and data directory for the tests are created.

comp_root

Returns the component root directory.

data_dir

Return the data directory

check_output ( actual => $actual_output, expect => $expected_output )

Given the parameters shown above, this method will check to see if the two are equal. If they're not equal, it will print out an error message attempting to highlight the difference.

ADDITIONAL RUN MODES

The following additional modes are available for running tests.

Verbose mode

To turn this on, set the environment variables MASON_VERBOSE or MASON_DEBUG as true or run the tests as 'make test TEST_VERBOSE=1'. In this mode, the run method will output information about tests as they are run. If a test fails, then it will also show the cause of the failure.

Debug mode

To turn this on, set the MASON_DEBUG environment variable to a true value. In this mode, the run method will print detailed information of its actions. This mode includes the output printed in VERBOSE mode.

Create mode

If the individual tests are run from the command line with the '--create' flag, then instead of checking the output of a component, the test harness will simply output its results. This allows you to cut and paste these results back into the test file (assuming they are correct!).

cpanm HTML::Mason

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install HTML::Mason