SimpleTest's web browser component can be used not just
outside of the WebTestCase class, but also
independently of the SimpleTest framework itself.
You can use the web browser in PHP scripts to confirm
services are up and running, or to extract information
from them at a regular basis.
For example, here is a small script to extract the current number of
open PHP 5 bugs from the PHP web site...
file()
command against what here is a pretty fixed page.
However, using the web browser for scripts allows authentication,
correct handling of cookies, automatic loading of frames, redirects,
form submission and the ability to examine the page headers.
Such methods are fragile against a site that is constantly
evolving and you would want a more direct way of accessing
data in a permanent set up, but for simple tasks this can provide
a very rapid solution.
All of the navigation methods used in the
WebTestCase
are present in the SimpleBrowser class, but
the assertions are replaced with simpler accessors.
Here is a full list of the page navigation methods...
addHeader($header) | Adds a header to every fetch |
useProxy($proxy, $username, $password) | Use this proxy from now on |
head($url, $parameters) | Perform a HEAD request |
get($url, $parameters) | Fetch a page with GET |
post($url, $parameters) | Fetch a page with POST |
clickLink($label) | Follows a link by label |
isLink($label) | See if a link is present by label |
clickLinkById($id) | Follows a link by attribute |
isLinkById($id) | See if a link is present by attribut |
getUrl() | Current URL of page or frame |
getTitle() | Page title |
getContent() | Raw page or frame |
getContentAsText() | HTML removed except for alt text |
retry() | Repeat the last request |
back() | Use the browser back button |
forward() | Use the browser forward button |
authenticate($username, $password) | Retry page or frame after a 401 response |
restart($date) | Restarts the browser for a new session |
ageCookies($interval) | Ages the cookies by the specified time |
setCookie($name, $value) | Sets an additional cookie |
getCookieValue($host, $path, $name) | Reads the most specific cookie |
getCurrentCookieValue($name) | Reads cookie for the current context |
SimpleBrowser::useProxy() and
SimpleBrowser::addHeader() are special.
Once called they continue to apply to all subsequent fetches.
Navigating forms is similar to the WebTestCase form navigation...
setField($name, $value) | Sets all form fields with that name |
setFieldById($id, $value) | Sets all form fields with that id |
getField($name) | Accessor for a form element value |
getFieldById($id) | Accessor for a form element value |
clickSubmit($label) | Submits form by button label |
clickSubmitByName($name) | Submits form by button attribute |
clickSubmitById($id) | Submits form by button attribute |
clickImage($label, $x, $y) | Clicks the image by alt text |
clickImageByName($name, $x, $y) | Clicks the image by attribute |
clickImageById($id, $x, $y) | Clicks the image by attribute |
submitFormById($id) | Submits by the form tag attribute |
Within a page, individual frames can be selected. If no selection is made then all the frames are merged together in one large conceptual page. The content of the current page will be a concatenation of all of the frames in the order that they were specified in the "frameset" tags.
getFrames() | A dump of the current frame structure |
getFrameFocus() | Current frame label or index |
setFrameFocusByIndex($choice) | Select a frame numbered from 1 |
setFrameFocus($name) | Select frame by label |
clearFrameFocus() | Treat all the frames as a single page |
All of this functionality is great when we actually manage to fetch pages, but that doesn't always happen. To help figure out what went wrong, the browser has some methods to aid in debugging...
setConnectionTimeout($timeout) | Close the socket on overrun |
getRequest() | Raw request header of page or frame |
getHeaders() | Raw response header of page or frame |
getTransportError() | Any socket level errors in the last fetch |
getResponseCode() | HTTP response of page or frame |
getMimeType() | Mime type of page or frame |
getAuthentication() | Authentication type in 401 challenge header |
getRealm() | Authentication realm in 401 challenge header |
setMaximumRedirects($max) | Number of redirects before page is loaded anyway |
setMaximumNestedFrames($max) | Protection against recursive framesets |
ignoreFrames() | Disables frames support |
useFrames() | Enables frames support |
ignoreCookies() | Disables sending and receiving of cookies |
useCookies() | Enables cookie support |
SimpleBrowser::setConnectionTimeout()
SimpleBrowser::setMaximumRedirects(),
SimpleBrowser::setMaximumNestedFrames(),
SimpleBrowser::ignoreFrames(),
SimpleBrowser::useFrames(),
SimpleBrowser::ignoreCookies() and
SimpleBrowser::useCokies() continue to apply
to every subsequent request.
The other methods are frames aware.
This means that if you have an individual frame that is not
loading, navigate to it using SimpleBrowser::setFrameFocus()
and you can then use SimpleBrowser::getRequest(), etc to
see what happened.
Anything that could be done in a
WebTestCase can
now be done in a UnitTestCase.
This means that we can freely mix domain object testing with the
web interface...
A more useful case of where using the browser directly can be helpful
is where the WebTestCase cannot cope.
An example is where two browsers are needed at the same time.
For example, say we want to disallow multiple simultaneous
usage of a site with the same username.
This test case will do the job...
SimpleBrowser class
directly when you want to write test cases using a different
test tool than SimpleTest.