Re: Future of HttpUnit?

On Mar 9, 2006, at 2:19 AM, Brad Clarke wrote:

> I've been watching this conversation with a highly biased thought  
> in my head. I
> really hate to be a troll here, but with this latest bit I feel I  
> have to say
> something.
>
> When initially evaluating HttpUnit for our testing needs I found  
> that a primary
> virtue of HttpUnit was it's ability to be mostly divorced from the  
> content of the
> page, instead focusing primarily on the HTTP protocol and giving  
> the tool much more
> of a unit testing feel and the greater speed that goes with it. As  
> I was trying to
> build/replace an acceptance testing framework this was not exactly  
> what I was
> looking for.
>
> I also looked at HtmlUnit. While it's much more difficult (if not  
> just impossible)
> to do the sort of direct unit testing that HttpUnit can do, it was  
> much more focused
> on the content of the page and maintaining state just as a real  
> browser does. This
> was most noticeable in HtmlUnit's greater support for JavaScript,  
> which made it much
> more suited for the type of testing I was looking to do. I ended up  
> going with
> HtmlUnit as our tool and eventually becoming a developer on the  
> project (hence the
> bias).
>
> The reason I feel I need to say something now is that this design  
> change you mention
> would be moving toward the same model HtmlUnit already has. Maybe  
> it would be to the
> advantage of both projects if instead people were just refered to  
> the HtmlUnit
> project when this level of functionality is required? To me the two  
> tools have clear
> and distict "markets" and attempting to overlap them any more than  
> required seems to
> be a waste of obviously limited resources.

What I am talking about is actually getting closer to HttpUnit's  
original roots. I believe that I can accomplish that without losing  
any of HttpUnit's strengths - it's actually a simplification of the  
code. While the model is superficially similar to that of HtmlUnit, I  
think that there are vital philosophical approach differences,  
although I would have to look again at HtmlUnit to see.


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