Directory: gui/

GUI testing

This directory contains some routines to help test IDL GUI applications.

Applications are difficult to test. Even though these routines can help create test suites for GUIs, the application must be written with making testing possible, e.g., adding routines/methods to your application to output certain values, the ability to change the main (and only) event handler for your application, etc.

Basic plan

As an example, suppose I would like to test an application with main launch routine MY_APPLICATION and event handler MY_APPLICATION_EVENT. The two basic steps to test this application are: 1) record a sequence of IDL events that should be tested, and 2) write a test that plays these events back to the GUI and then checks the state of the GUI in some way

The basic plan to record and playback events for the application is to insert a special event handler between XMANAGER and the regular event handler, MY_APPLICATION_EVENT. As part of the preparation to make my application testable, I need to be able to run my application with different event handlers, so I will add an EVENT_HANDLER keyword to MY_APPLICATION. By default, EVENT_HANDLER will be "MY_APPLICATION_EVENT", but I can set it to different values when I launch my application.

Recording the event sequence

To record the sequence of events (which I would only need to do once for a given test, until something changes), I would do the following at the IDL command line:

  IDL> mgunit_event_setup, filename='test1.txt', $
  IDL> event_handler='my_application_event', /record
  IDL> my_application, event_handler='mgunit_event_recorder'

This launches my application where I can perform the sequence of actions. The events for these actions are saved to test1.txt and also passed along to my application so that it can react as normal. When I have entered the sequence of actions, then at the command line I do:

  IDL> mgunit_event_setup, /stop

Playing the event sequence

To play back a sequence of events, typically in a test case, we will do something like:

  function my_application_ut::test_basic1
    compile_opt strictarr

    mgunit_event_setup, filename='test1.txt', $
                        event_handler='my_application_event'
    my_application, tlb=tlb
    mgunit_event_player

    my_application_helper, tlb=tlb, value=value

    assert, value eq correct_value, 'incorrect value: %s', value

    return, 1
  end

.pro files

mgunit_event_player.pro: Event handler for a GUI application which will play back a sequence of previously recorded events.
mgunit_event_recorder.pro: Record the events for a
mgunit_event_setup.pro: Setup the state of the event recorder/players.

mgunit 1.2 API documentation

Unit testing framework for IDL