Article: Unit-Testing XML

Posted by Stefan Tilkov on Jun 11, 2007 06:11 AM

Community

Agile,

Java,

SOA

Topics

Delivering Quality,

Unit Testing,

Software Testing

Tags

XMLUnit,

Validation,

XML,

TDD,

Testing

There are many occasions where software creates XML output:  XML documents are used for data interchange between different applications, web application create (X)HTML output or respond to AJAX requests with XML, and this has to be tested as much as anything else.

The major problem with testing operations that produce XML results is to decide whether the result is correct or not, since a simple textual comparison is not enough.

In this exclusive InfoQ article, XMLUnit and Ant contributor Stefan Bodewig explains how to write tests in the presence of XML, showing detailed example scenarios and how to approach them with the help of the XMLUnit Java framework.

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   Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   Jun 11, 2007 4:59 PM by anjan bacchu

   Hi There/Stefan, Seems to be an useful tool. I've used my home grown xml utilities for command line validation of xml files. command line usage : I recently came across validate-xml.jar from woodstox "xml Processor" project. This seems to be a decent tool that points out where in an xml file a warning/error lies -- sort of like a compiler output. It would be nice to have a good WebServices/SOAP Unit Testing tool for the java world. Is there one ? I will be working on a project where I will be developing(exposing) some web services as well as consuming some. It will be nice to have a tool that will test my webservices before the actual client interop tests. What will be nice is to have a) a command-line client to test some basic webservices functionality like validity, list operations, etc b) something like XMLUnit which helps in junit/TestNG unit tests. What do people in the .NET world do ? Thanks BR, ~A

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   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   Jun 12, 2007 4:19 AM by Steve Loughran

   Anjan, 0. Ant has to check XSD files; Jing has a relax NG validation task. 1. You can use XMLUnit under TestNG as well as JUnit. 2. SOAP testing? Why would we need to test SOAP? I dont think its really time to improve the testing/debug facilities in SOAP land, because after so many years, you still end up using a TCP trace tool to work out why your messages arent being understood by the far end. Better to start working on the tools we need to make testing RESTy systems easier. Sorry :) -Steve Steve Loughran, Ant development team, Author of Ant in Action

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   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   Jun 12, 2007 5:15 AM by Stefan Bodewig

   as for SOAP specific testing tools, I'm not aware of any. People in the .NET world use NUnit or MBUnit (very few may use Team Test) - together with XMLUnit for .NET, I hope.

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   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   Jul 10, 2007 3:37 AM by Andreas A

   soapUI worked pretty good for testing our webservices. Tests can be extended with groovy scripts for automatic input/output transitions between test steps

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   The listings are a bit cumbersome...

   Nov 28, 2007 4:45 AM by Krzysztof Witukiewicz

   ...because xml tags are interpreted by the browser :/ If anybody has better 'viewing experience', then please tell me what app do you use (I tried Firefox 2.0, IE6 and Opera 9.02)

   Reply

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