Talk:Selenium/PHP/Selenium Framework/LQT Archive 1

Test suite setup

After yesterday's (5-14-2010) audio meeting, I thought a bit more about some of the test suite start-up issues. Here are some random thoughts (note: my interest is regression testing, so that is the context of these comments):

• Originally, I thought it would be best to startup the selenium-server at machine boot. However, I no longer think this is the correct strategy. You probably want a separate selenium-server per user/client/test developer. Also, you really only need the server to run during a test. So, perhaps a better idea is to instrument the framework with a setup facility. This would be called before a test suite runs. One of the things it could do is test to see if the selenium-server is running and if not, start it.

• Another thing the setup facility could do is setup the database appropriately. This assumes a test suite is designed to run using common wiki data. If not (e.g., each test needs different data in the wiki), then you would need a per-test setup facility.

• Yesterday, someone mentioned the idea of setting up the test database by dropping tables and then repopulating them. Another idea is to drop the database and recreate it from an existing database (nb: our wiki uses postgres, so I am not sure of the implications of this idea for mysql databases).

Dnessett 19:28, 15 May 2010 (UTC)