Article: Unit-Testing XML

Posted by Stefan Tilkov on Jun 11, 2007

Sections

Enterprise Architecture,

Process & Practices,

Development,

Architecture & Design

Topics

SOA ,

Delivering Quality ,

Java ,

Agile ,

Unit Testing ,

Software Testing

Tags

TDD ,

XML ,

XMLUnit ,

Testing ,

Validation

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.

1. Back to top

   Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   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

   Reply

2. Back to top

   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   by Steve Loughran

   Anjan,
   0. Ant has <schemavalidate> 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
   </schemavalidate>

   Reply

3. Back to top

   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   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.

   Reply

4. Back to top

   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   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

   Reply

5. Back to top

   The listings are a bit cumbersome...

   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

6. Back to top

   Re: Is there an equivalent SoapUnit ?

   by Priyanka Grover

   SoapUI is extremely good.

   Reply

7. Back to top

   Re: The listings are a bit cumbersome...

   by Lars Huttar

   I have the same question. I can get to the XML by using "View Source", but as you say it's cumbersome. Firefox 5.0 is not doing any better. Can't blame the browser... InfoQ is outputting the XML unescaped, as if it were part of the HTML. :-S
   
   Could an editor please format the XML code properly?

   Reply

8. Back to top

   Ignore special characters while comparing xmls

   by shireesh adla

   Hi,
   
   Not sure if this thread is still active.
   
   iam using Xmlunit to compare xml strings,
   
   Diff diff = new Diff(actualXML, expectedXML);
   
   the comparison fails for similar xml's if they contain special characters in them (eg: both the xml's have "abc-xyz").
   
   Is there any way to ignore special characters while comapring?.
   
   Thanks in advance
   
   Shireesh

   Reply

• Older >