[Windmill-dev] Python test suites

[Adam Christian]

Robert,

I think that is is absolutely true that there is a tipping point where  
you find yourself having to really fight the python/json tests and the  
IDE to accomplish everything you are wanting to do in your app.

While you loose a lot of the really useful debugging/test writing  
functionality in the IDE etc. when using the JS tests (I am working on  
a way to integrate the IDE and the JS tests better) you gain this huge  
amount of flexibility. You could go and build a file of extensions to  
call from the IDE to do all of the complex JS stuff you want to do,  
you could pass huge strings of executable JS as actions in your JSON/ 
Python tests but at some point doing it all as functions in the JS  
tests really makes more sense, and is simply less frustrating as a  
developer/tester.

If you get into using the JS tests you will be a pioneer in some  
respects as there has been very little use of this by people outside  
of the project.. we have really benefitted by your feedback so far,  
please keep it going with the JS test framework. It would be nice to  
get that whipped into shape so that I felt fully comfortable saying it  
was fully documented and ready for avg joe public consumption.

Adam

On Dec 18, 2007, at 4:38 PM, Robert Leftwich wrote:

>
> On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:14:41 -0800, "Mikeal Rogers"
> <mikeal at osafoundation.org> said:
>> I think some history brings this in to context.
>
> It does.
>
> There is some excellent information that should be added to the
> book/wiki in some form!
>
>> I don't think any of these matter. The question honestly is "do you
>> know python?" and "would you prefer working with python test files
>> rather than a markup?".
>
> As someone comfortable with python this was my decision point - I
> basically just wanted to know if I would be missing anything by not
> using json (or vice versa).
>
>> The JavaScript framework shines in that it has access to well,
>> JavaScript, and the entirety of your webapp and every object
>> available. We have a huge range of testability in the windmill API
>> available from any language, but there is a point at which there  
>> isn't
>> anything we can do. If something is so dynamic and unpredictable that
>> you need a good amount of code to get each id, and it's not something
>> that is reusable enough to be an extension. This sounds like some way
>> off use case but it really isn't. Web apps are getting incredibly
>> complex, and this case is coming up more and more often.
>
> In my case I got to that situation fairly quickly. Some extensions I
> needed to write were *very* specific to a test or at least to a single
> page and I'm starting to wonder if using the JavaScript framework is  
> the
> way to go. As the likelihood of requiring more test/page specific
> extensions is high, it might be a better investment to choose the JS
> approach over python, Although, the python tests are a lot more  
> readable
> to me than the js/json examples I've seen.
>
> I wonder if there might be an advantage in keeping the extensions and
> the Python tests close together and perhaps more dynamic, i.e. to be
> able to define extensions in the Python setup_module() or even as some
> sort of decorator, rather than requiring completely separate files and
> directories?
>
> Robert
> _______________________________________________
> Windmill-dev mailing list
> Windmill-dev at osafoundation.org
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/windmill-dev