Comprehensive example

Now it's time to try a browser test. We don't have to change too much in our class, because DrupalWebTestCase class contains tools for both tests.

We would to like check Drupal's response when specifying an invalid email address in the registration form (user/register). Let's look into the source:

<div class="form-item">
 <label for="edit-name">Username:</label><span class="form-required">*</span><br>
 <input maxlength="64" class="form-text required" name="edit[name]" id="edit-name" size="30" value="" type="text">
 <div class="description">Your full name or your preferred username; only letters, numbers and spaces are allowed.</div>
</div>
<div class="form-item">
 <label for="edit-mail">E-mail address:</label><span class="form-required">*</span><br>
 <input maxlength="64" class="form-text required" name="edit[mail]" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" type="text">
 <div class="description">A password and instructions will be sent to this e-mail address, so make sure it is accurate.</div>
</div>

It is important to notice the name of fields in which we want to put data. There are two of them: edit[name] and edit[mail].

We begin with the same thing everytime:

class OurSecondTest extends DrupalTestCase {
 // we need this function to notify the world about our great test 
 function getInfo() {
    // Note: getInfo() strings are not translated.
    return array(
      'name' => 'Be a browser',
      'desc' => "This tests the browser's response on invalid mail input in the registration process.",
      'group' => 'Example tests',
    );
  }

Then we write our test function:

 function testBrowserResponse() {
    // let's create a random name and email
    $name = $this->randomName(10);
    $mail = $this->randomName(10);
    // Try to register
    $edit = array('name' => $name, 'mail' => $mail);
    $this->drupalPost('user/register', $edit, t('Create new account'));
    $expectation = t('The e-mail address %mail is not valid.', array('%mail' => $mail));
    // Note: Assertion messages are not translated.
    $this->assertText($expectation, 'The response to an invalid e-mail address was correct');
  }

Let's look at each line individually:

    $name = $this->randomName(10); 

This line creates a 10 character random string, which is by default prefixed with 'simpletest_'.

Example: simpletest_XK3sKW5lFx

    $edit = array('name' => $name, 'mail' => $mail);
    $this->drupalPost('user/register', $edit, t('Create new account'));

In these two lines, we prepare and send data to our form.
We run drupalPost with the following parameters:

1. The path to our form (e.g. 'user/register'). We don't use ?q=, or the whole address http://www.example.com/?q=user/register, because this function creates the proper address for us.
2. Array of sent data. Look at the special construction of this array ( => ). We just use the form field names in brackets from above: 'name' and 'mail'. The rest is done by this function.
3. The name of the button which we have to click to send our form. In our example it is: t('Create new account').

    $expectation = t('The e-mail address %mail is not valid.', array('%mail' => $mail));

We prepare our expectation using t() function. We took this from user.module.

$this->assertText($expectation, 'The response to an invalid e-mail address was correct');

At last we check if our expectation appears on the content page. Note that the second argument to assertText() is the message that will appear on the test page, and this should not be translated.

When we run this test we should receive the following output:

Example tests
1/1 test cases complete: 5 passes, 0 fails and 0 exceptions

If you look closely, you notice that we have 5 passes in the result, but in the test code we only have one check (using assertWantedText). Where is the rest hidden?

The answer is: $this->drupalPost('user/register', $edit, t('Create new account'));
If we don't specify the 4th parameter in the drupalPost function we will have additional checking. In our example it is:

1. checking if url is valid
2. checking if data was inserted in form's fields
3. checking if we clicked our button

And that's why we have 1 + 4 = 5 passes. If you need to avoid this, give the 4th parameter the value 0.