[Webtest] Modularizing tests

[Dirk Olmes]

Hi,

I've read the chapter about property usage in the WebTest documentation
but what's mentioned there seems to be only part of what you can
accomplish with WebTest and ant.

Here's what I try to do:
I have a stateful web app (i.e. one that has a session identifier) where 
I need to fill out a certain form more than once, each time with 
different values.

Filling out the form seems to be perfectly reusable:

<setinputfield stepid="..." name="${field1}" value="AA"/>
<setinputfield stepid="..." name="${field2}" value="123"/>
<clickbutton stepid="..." label="goForIt"/>

However, since ant allows the setting of properties only once the way to 
go seems to be the "ant" or "antcall" tasks.

This is where the trouble starts: each WebTest task needs to include the 
full configuration/testspec which internally results in the creation of 
a new WebConversation. This breaks my app since I have to have a 
constant clickpath through the application.

I've hacked around in WebTest a bit so that a WebConversation will be 
created only once and all subsequent testspecs just reuse that WC. So 
now I can do something like:

<target name="CreateAdmin">
     <ant antfile="Login.xml">
         <property name="username" value="admin"/>
         <property name="password" value="admin"/>	
     </ant>
     <ant antfile="GotoUserManagement.xml"/>
     <ant antfile="FillOutUserCreationForm.xml">
         <property name="firstname" value="Willi"/>
         <property name="lastname" value="Wusel"/>
         <property name="department" value="Testabteilung"/>
         <property name="loginname" value="willi"/>
         <property name="password" value="willi"/>
     </ant>
     <antcall target="AssignAdminRight"/>
</target>

and each ant file specifies a full testspec like:

<target name="Login">
     <testSpec name="Login">
         &config;				

         <steps>
             <setinputfield name="username" value="${username}" />
             <setinputfield name="password" value="${password}" />
	    <clickbutton name="login" />
         </steps>
     </testSpec>	
</target>

Is this anyone interested in a more generic solution, i.e. the config 
tag allowing something like <config reusewebconversation="true"/>? Would 
this be included into the distro? Where do I have to submit the patches?

-dirk