assert_valid_markup plugin for Rails

Validate your (X)HTML from within your functional tests. If anything changes to invalidate your markup, you’ll know pronto.

If xmllint/xmlcatalog are available in your PATH, this plugin will use them to validate your xml. When doing so, it will automatically fetch and cache all DTDs locally so that you don’t incur a network hit on future runs.

Otherwise, validations will be done using the W3C Validator web service (validator.w3.org/). Responses from the web service are cached, so your tests aren’t slowed down unless something has changed.

Installation

Install as a gem:

gem install assert_valid_markup

and edit config/environments/test.rb:

config.gem 'assert_valid_markup'

or install as a plugin:

./script/plugin install http://github.com/wr0ngway/assert_valid_markup

Usage

Calling the assertion with no parameters validates whatever is in @request.body, which is automatically set by the existing get/post/etc helpers. For example:

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_bar_markup
    get :bar
    assert_valid_markup
  end
end

Add a string parameter to the assertion to validate any random fragment. Por ejemplo:

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_bar_markup
    assert_valid_markup "<div>Hello, world.</div>"
  end
end

For the ultimate in convenience, use the class-level methods to validate a slew of actions in one line. Par exemple:

class FooControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  assert_valid_markup :bar, :baz, :qux
end

# automatically validate all GETs in BarControllerTest
class BarControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  assert_all_valid_markup
end

# Add this to test_helper to automatically validate the responses for ALL GETs in ALL controllers
class ActionController::TestCase < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  assert_all_valid_markup
end

Credits

Scott Raymond <sco@scottraymond.net>. Released under the MIT license. Matt Conway <matt@conwaysplace.com> (xmllint additions) Latest version: github.com/wr0ngway/assert_valid_markup