Client side tests for the notebook

[ellisonbg]

Currently, the client side of the IPython Notebook is not tested in any manner. Originally, Stefan submitted a PR that implemented some basic things using Selenium (#1493). Brian was not very fond of that approach, so we are opening this issue to continue the discussion.

[ellisonbg]

I have been exploring other options, in particular ones that would allow us to:

1. Easily run tests that span multiple pages.
2. Manipulate the DOM using jQuery.
3. Use our custom JavaScript objects on each page.

The best thing I have found so far is PhantomJS and CasperJS:

http://phantomjs.org/
http://casperjs.org/

PhantomJS is a headless WebKit implementation that can be driven using a simple JavaScript API. CasperJS adds nice navigation and testing capabilities on top of PhantomJS. Here is a simple test script I wrote using these:

https://gist.github.com/3329929

CasperJS has a a nice test running that can pick up different test files and combine them into a full test suite. Here is the result of running my simple test file:

http://i.imgur.com/4MSNU.jpg

[takluyver]

Bonus points if they can save results in the Xunit/Junit XML format that
ShiningPanda can display.

[ellisonbg]

Yep:

casperjs test --xunit=<filename>

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 3:24 AM, Thomas Kluyver notifications@github.comwrote:

Bonus points if they can save results in the Xunit/Junit XML format that
ShiningPanda can display.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/2292#issuecomment-7674389.

Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[fperez]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Brian E. Granger
notifications@github.comwrote:

casperjs test --xunit=<filename>

Yummy... That's starting to sound very interesting...

[sychan]

Has there been any activity on this since last year? We're looking at doing integration testing for our notebook, and I remembered overhearing some discussions about PhantomJS at the dev meeting. A quick review last week pointed to using Ghostdriver + Selenium + PhantomJS (+mocha or whatever JS superstructure) as a way to drive it all from Python, while using JS for the client side stuff.

[minrk]

Yes, PR #4285 lays the groundwork for testing with casperjs

[sychan]

Min - Thanks - this looks perfect.