Testing reports

[Colin Scott]

> Do you know how to write automated tests -- in any language -- that 
> accurately check the output format of an HTML page? Automated in 
> this case means the test program decides whether the formatting is 
> correct, no human involved. If you do, or know where I can learn 
> that, please share.

Sadly, no.  When I was doing this sort of stuff the output was in text format rather than HTML.  I did invent a rather crude - but nonetheless effective - test rig for a very large suite of programs, including reports, where a program could be run on a standard set of inputs, and diff the output with that from a baseline run.  It wasn't very flexible, but it was pretty effective at its rather simple-minded task, and was particularly helpful for regression testing ...

> The reports module doesn't have a test environment (and Guile 
> doesn't provide one until 2.0), but the requirement is for 
> automated tests that report success or failure to make check.

known data + known input = known output!

If something like Guile didn't provide the test facilities I needed, my simple-minded habit was to wrap it up in some suitable envelope (usually a shell script, but occsionally some Perl or similar!), and examine the outputs as in the "equation" above!  My guess is that for this task at any rate you don't think kludgey enough!  :-)

Colin