[Webtest] Another hint for factoring your ANT xml file

[Alan Grover]

Here's my first quick solution to creating entities that contain 
double-quotes (or, conversely, single-quotes).

The canoo webtest website recommends lifting small repeated chunks of 
XML into entities:
	 <config value="some"> ...</config>
to
	<?xml version="1.0"?>
	<!DOCTYPE project [
	  <!ENTITY config "<config value='some'> ...</config>">
	]>
	...
	<task blah>&config;</task>
noting the translation of " to '.

But what about the case where you have a ' in the attribute value? For 
example, an xpath expression:
	string(//div[@id='statTable'])
you'd want something like:
	<verifyxpath
		text="90"
		regex="true"
		stepid="check for value"
		xpath="string(//div[@id='statTable'])"
	/>
Note the ' in the double-quoted xpath attribute value.

I tried using entities to encode the double quotes (instead of 
translating them to single quotes). This works as long as you use the 
numeric encoding and not the entity _name_ (since it doesn't exist!):
	<?xml version="1.0"?>
	<!DOCTYPE project [
	<!ENTITY checkStatTable  " <verifyxpath text='already in use' 
regex='true'
		stepid='check already in-use validation'
		xpath=&#x22;string(//div[@id='statTable'])&#x22; />"
	>
(I didn't have any CR in my real file, in the entity definition above).
Notice the &#22;, which is ".

I put larger chunks in a file and "include" it with the SYSTEM entity 
declaration.

What other solutions have you discovered?
---
Alan Grover
awgrover@mail.msen.com