The intent of Test::CGI is almost the same. It's about crafting test sequences that will be run against a web application in an automated fashion. That said, I think RoboWeb wins hands down, author modesty not withstanding:

1. RoboWeb makes it much easier to generate a test suite, because test sequence scripts under it are almost completely machine generated, except assertions, which are easily inserted by entering regexps in the URL box as you browse through your app. Test::CGI instead requires that all HTTP requests be hand coded by the test writer.

2. RoboWeb runs against a live web server, versus Test::CGI, which runs web apps as standalone CGI processes. Test::CGI is less complete in this regard, because it doesn't allow to test apps in the environment they'll be running on (e.g. mod_perl apps that rely on persitent variables are not testable with Test::CGI).

3. The RoboWeb client (which uses LWP::UserAgent and an HTTP::Cookie jar) supports cookies, which allow it to test most web applications. Test::CGI does not support cookies.

4. Test::CGI cannot request plain documents, whereas Roboweb can.

5. Both RoboWeb and Test::CGI produce Test::Harness output.

Regards,

Gregorovius

I thought about doing it but it's just too large to be practical. Maybe a bit of the more interesting code can do instead. Here's the code for the web proxy that generates the perl scripts that reproduce user behavior:

(Note that the generated script uses a module called NetscapeLikeUA; this is a subclass of LWP::UserAgent that will follow redirects after POST requests, unlike the standard dictates but as Netscape does --see the sourcforge tarball for it)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use HTTP::Daemon;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use Data::Dumper;
use URI::Escape qw(uri_unescape uri_escape);

$Data::Dumper::Varname = 'req';
$Data::Dumper::Purity = 1;

use RoboWeb::Util qw(pristine_please);


my $listen_port = 8080;

my $logfile = '/tmp/proxy_log';


sub _gen_page_fetch {
    my $request = shift;

    my $path = $request->uri->path();
    my $url = $request->uri->as_string();

    # we don't test for images being there.
    return unless ($path !~ /(gif|jpg|jpeg)$/);

    # don't save the cookies
    $request->header('Cookie' => '');
    
    my $req_code = Dumper $request;
    $req_code = uri_escape($req_code);

    open LOG, ">>$logfile" or die "could not open $logfile";
    print LOG "# print STDERR \"fetching $url\\n\\n\";\n\n";
    print LOG "\$req_code = uri_unescape(q{$req_code\});\n";
    print LOG "eval(\$req_code);\n";
    print LOG "die \"badly frozen request \$!\" if \$\@;\n";
    print LOG "\$cookie_jar->add_cookie_header(\$req1);\n";
    
    print LOG "\$resp = \$ua->request(\$req1);\n";
    
    print LOG "die \"could not fetch URL $url\" unless(\$resp->is_succ
+ess());\n";
    
    print LOG "\$cookie_jar->extract_cookies(\$resp);\n";
    
    print LOG "\$html = \$resp->content();\n";
    print LOG "#print STDERR \$html;\n";
    print LOG "#print STDERR \"\\n\\n\",  '*' x 70, \"\\n\\n\";";  
    print LOG "\n\n\n\n";  
    close LOG;
       
}


sub _start_rec {
    &pristine_please;    
    open LOG, ">$logfile" or die "could not open $logfile";
    print LOG "#!/usr/bin/perl -w\n\n";
    print LOG "use RoboWeb::NetscapeLikeUA;\n";
    print LOG "use HTTP::Cookies;\n";
    print LOG "use URI::http;\n";
    print LOG "use URI::Escape qw(uri_unescape);\n\n";
    
    print LOG "print \"1..__REPLACE_NUM_TESTS__\\n\";\n\n";
    print LOG "my (\$req1, \$resp, \$html);\n";
    print LOG "my \$cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new;\n";
    print LOG "my \$ua = RoboWeb::NetscapeLikeUA->new;\n\n\n";
    close LOG;

}


sub _end_rec {
    my $filename = shift;

    $filename =~ s/\W//g;
    $filename = $filename || 'HERE_I_AM';
    $filename .= '.t';
    open LOG, "$logfile" or die "could not open $logfile";
    open OUTF, ">$filename" or die "could not open /tmp/$filename";
    my $text;
    {
    local $/ = undef;  # slurp mode
    $text = <LOG>;
    close LOG;      
    }
    my $i = 1;
    $i++ while $text =~ s/__REPLACE_ME__/$i/;
    $i--;
    $text =~ s/__REPLACE_NUM_TESTS__/$i/;
    print OUTF $text;
    close OUTF;

    print "Created file: $filename\n";
}


sub _must_match {
    my $path = shift;
    
    open LOG, ">>$logfile" or die "could not open $logfile";
    print LOG "print 'not ' unless \$html =~ $path;\n";
    print LOG "print \"ok __REPLACE_ME__\\n\";\n\n\n";
    close LOG;    
}        


sub _must_not_match {
    my $path = shift;

    open LOG, ">>$logfile" or die "could not open $logfile";
    print LOG "print 'not ' unless \$html !~ $path;\n";
    print LOG "print \"ok __REPLACE_ME__\\n\";\n\n\n";
    close LOG;
}


my ($req, $resp, $html);

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $d = new HTTP::Daemon LocalPort => $listen_port;

print "I'll be your proxy today. Please contact me at: <URL:", $d->url
+, ">\n";

while (my $c = $d->accept) {
    while (my $r = $c->get_request) {    
    
    my $serv =  $r->uri->host;
    my $path =  $r->uri->path;
    my $port =  $r->uri->port;
    
    print STDERR "Getting $serv - $path - $port\n";
    
    if($serv =~ /start_rec$/i) {        
        
        _start_rec();
        
    } 
    elsif($serv =~ /end_rec$/i) {        
        
        _end_rec($path);
        
    }
    elsif($serv =~ /must_match$/i) {        
        
        _must_match($path);

    }
    elsif($serv =~ /must_not_match$/i) {        
        
        _must_not_match($path);

    }
    elsif($serv =~ /pristine$/i) {        
        
        &pristine_please;
        
    }
    else {
        # proxy code
        # XXX change port of the request
        $resp = $ua->request($r);
        
        _gen_page_fetch($r);
        
        $c->send_response($resp);
                
    }
    }
    $c->close;
    undef($c);
}
[download]

Regards,

Gregorovius

I am listing this for completeness, so we know about all viable options.

Any idea what happened to Webmonkey? The sourceforge project page doesn't have any info that I can find.

--
"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."