Hi there!
I have been working to get the new REST API working with Koha.
Big issues are authenticating the REST API and doing browser-based automated
testing.
However there are some pretty fundamental issues in Koha that make working with
those topics very difficult.
PERMISSIONS:
First of all the permissions system is very hard to manipulate outside of the
user space. There is no internal Koha API for granting/revoking specific
permissions.
This is a huge issue with integration testing where we need to easily set up
test context with proper permissions.
Also there is no way currently to conveniently operate permissions using a REST
API. So we would need to rewrite the permission back-end anyway.
Bug 14540<http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14540> -
Move member-flags.pl to PermissionsManager to better manage permissions for
testing.
deals with this issue and rewrites the internal permission mechanism, while
preserving the end-user experience as it was.
This enables us as testers to easily setUp and tearDown permissions for
automated browser testing sessions.
I recommend you take a look, as the rewrite is well tested and covered with
WebDriver-tests.
INTEGRATION TESTING:
I have implemented a integration testing framework using the PageObject-pattern
to create clear and robust browser tests. These browser tests don't need any
additional servers to install, but rely on system packages (apt-get install
phantomjs) to make the integration tests.
These tests instantiate a real browser with javascript execution capability,
and make real HTTP requests to the configured host and port, simulating real
user interactions as accurately as possible. There are also two debugging
interfaces for the automated test agent to make it more easy to script the user
session.
Take a look at:
Bug 14495<http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14495> -
WebDriver/WebTester Factory for easy generation of Web testing UserAgents.
Bug 14536<http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14536> -
PageObject-pattern base implementation
DEALING WITH EXCEPTIONS:
In Koha we currently don't have any established mechanism of propagating errors
from business/database-layer to the end-user, and conveniently catching them
and presenting them. Currently we return $error-variables from subroutines,
which makes programming more challenging, and tedious, especially if we need to
propagate the same errors through multipe subroutine calls to the end-user.
I have implemented to Koha an Exception-system very similar from other
programming languages.
Quite frankly this is an industry standard nowadays and a best-practice for
dealing with things-going-wrong. It helps a lot in programming defensively.
Take a look at:
Bug 13995<http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=13995> -
Proper Exception handling
I am 100% convinced that these improvements will push Koha testing and
development to the next level.
The best overview of the new features can be seen from the test scripts in Bug
14540<http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14540>
Looking forward to your sign offs!
--
Olli-Antti Kivilahti
Järjestelmäkeittäjä
vaarakirjastot.fi
+358 50 449 7763
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