Pa11y Authentication Question

[qaDream77]

I got login working via phantomJS using the post method outlined at 1

How do i post via pa11y and how can i confirm that it actually logged me in because i always get the same amount of errors, warnings and notices so i am not sure if it successfully logged me in or not.

The reason i ask is because I have a login token which is created on session start to prevent cross site scripting, so how would i go about getting that token then doing a post?

EDIT: Using the config.json file to set

pa11y({
page: {
settings: {
j_username: 'testuser',
j_password: 'pwd1'
}
}
});

Doesn't do anything even on a login that doesn't have a login token. A working example would be amazing.

Edit 2: Is there any way to run pa11y from a .js file. Example usage: phantomjs pallyTest.js

the js file would contain the command to post and login and then run accessibility tests.

Thanks a lot for the help! Cheers.

[rowanmanning]

Hi @qaDream77, aside from setting a login token with cookies in the config, I don't think this is achievable yet. I'd like to add the ability to perform actions on the page before the run, would that solve your problem? Then you could write a script which fills out the login form and posts it before pa11y loads.

[qaDream77]

That would probably solve the issue.

Just one thing to add is that a lot of companies and websites now are trying to prevent cross site scripting along with other security vulnerabilities, so not only would a post needs to be made with username and password but a unique session token would have to be fetched from a cookie or from a hidden form field and sent along with the username and password in the post.

If pa11y could be run as a selenium or phantom library, then it wouldn't need to worry about any of that. Because it would just execute on the currently loaded page.

[rowanmanning]

I'm not going to have time to work on this right now, but I've opened a ticket which should solve this issue: #98. I'm tied up in the release of pa11y 3.0 at the moment, but will prioritise this afterwards.

[qaDream77]

Looking forward to it! I am curious what features 3.0 will bring, is there a list anywhere and do you maybe have an estimated release date?

Cheers!

[rowanmanning]

Yes, the PR for 3.0 outlines the features, it's mostly an API change though: #97. In terms of a release date, I'd say quite soon – I'm just waiting to hear back about a licensing change.

[rowanmanning]

Going to close this as it'll be solved when #98 makes it in. I'll hopefully have time to work on that in the near future.