1package HTML::FormHandler::Manual::Testing
2# ABSTRACT: testing forms
3
4__END__
5
6=pod
7
8=encoding UTF-8
9
10=head1 NAME
11
12HTML::FormHandler::Manual::Testing - testing forms
13
14=head1 VERSION
15
16version 0.40068
17
18=head1 SYNOPSIS
19
20L<Manual Index|HTML::FormHandler::Manual>
21
22One of the big advantages of FormHandler compared to many other form
23packages is that you can test the same form that you use in your
24controller.
25
26=head1 DESCRIPTION
27
28It's difficult to test forms that are instantiated in controllers with 'add_element'
29calls and from YAML, and that have no form class. It's one of the reasons that
30'dynamic' forms generated with a field_list aren't a good idea for
31anything except the simplest forms. If you have a form class that contains everything
32that is needed for processing the form, it's really really easy to create tests for
33forms. Look in the FormHandler 't' directory. It's full of tests for forms.
34
35You can test that the validations work, that the database is getting updated
36correctly, even that the HTML that's being rendered is correct. If something
37isn't working correctly, it's ten times easier to debug in a test case than
38sitting in a controller somewhere. And when you finally start up your application
39and use the form, there should be very few surprises.
40
41FormHandler provides a simple function to test whether the HTML output is
42correct, 'is_html' in L<HTML::FormHandler::Test>, which uses L<HTML::TreeBuilder>.
43If you need to build forms that use the rendering code to produce particular
44output, it can be helpful.
45
46=head1 Example
47
48Here's an example of a test, originally copied from one of the DBIC model tests.
49But you should download the tar.gz or checkout the distribution from github
50and browse through the tests.
51
52   use Test::More;
53   use lib 't/lib';
54
55   use_ok( 'BookDB::Form::Book');
56   use_ok( 'BookDB::Schema::DB');
57
58   my $schema = BookDB::Schema::DB->connect('dbi:SQLite:t/db/book.db');
59   ok($schema, 'get db schema');
60
61   my $form = BookDB::Form::Book->new(schema => $schema);
62
63   # This is munging up the equivalent of param data from a form
64   my $good = {
65       'title' => 'How to Test Perl Form Processors',
66       'author' => 'I.M. Author',
67       'genres' => [2, 4],
68       'format'       => 2,
69       'isbn'   => '123-02345-0502-2' ,
70       'publisher' => 'EreWhon Publishing',
71   };
72   ok( $form->process( params => $good ), 'Good data' );
73
74   my $book = $form->item;
75   END { $book->delete };
76   ok ($book, 'get book object from form');
77   my $num_genres = $book->genres->count;
78   is( $num_genres, 2, 'multiple select list updated ok');
79   is( $form->field('format')->value, 2, 'get value for format' );
80
81   my $bad_1 = {
82       notitle => 'not req',
83       silly_field   => 4,
84   };
85   ok( !$form->process( $bad_1 ), 'bad 1' );
86
87   my $bad_2 = {
88       'title' => "Another Silly Test Book",
89       'author' => "C. Foolish",
90       'year' => '1590',
91       'pages' => 'too few',
92       'format' => '22',
93   };
94   ok( !$form->process( $bad_2 ), 'bad 2');
95   ok( $form->field('year')->has_errors, 'year has error' );
96   ok( $form->field('pages')->has_errors, 'pages has error' );
97   ok( !$form->field('author')->has_errors, 'author has no error' );
98   ok( $form->field('format')->has_errors, 'format has error' );
99
100   my $good = {
101      title => "Another Silly Test Book",
102      author => "C. Foolish",
103      year => 1999,
104      pages => 101,
105      format => 2
106   };
107   ok( $form->process($good), 'now form validates' );
108
109   done_testing;
110
111=head1 AUTHOR
112
113FormHandler Contributors - see HTML::FormHandler
114
115=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
116
117This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Gerda Shank.
118
119This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
120the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
121
122=cut
123