NAME

Test::XML::Count - Perl extension for testing element count at a certain depth

SYNOPSIS

use Test::XML::Count tests => 8;

my $xml = "<foo><bar/><bar/><bar/></foo>";

# These will pass
xml_node_count $xml, '/foo', 1;
xml_node_count $xml, '/foo/bar', 3;
xml_max_nodes $xml, '/foo', 1;
xml_min_nodes $xml, '/foo/bar' 3;

# These will fail
xml_node_count $xml, '/foo', 10;
xml_node_count $xml, '/article', 1; # need an article
xml_min_nodes $xml, '/foo/bar', 10; # at least 10 <bar>'s in <foo>
xml_max_nodes $xml, '/foo/bar', 1;  # at MOST 1 <bar> in <foo>

DESCRIPTION

This test module allows you to check XML element counts. This is useful in testing applications which generate XML against known source data. At The New York Times, we use it during development to quickly verify that our RSS feeds meet very basic structural standards. For example, every news article needs to have exactly one of each of headline, byline, date and text, and at least one image.

This module fills a gap in Test::XML::Simple, which only has facilities to verify that an element exists (but not how many of it exist as direct siblings). This is a great way to validate the structure of your XML documents without doing any deep (SLOW) comparison. It also avoids having to hard code fragile element values that may change between tests or over time. Use Test::XML::Count in conjunction with your existing XML testing tools -- "SEE ALSO".

SHAMELESS PLUG

This module was developed by the New York Times Company as an internal testing tool, and graciously donated to the Perl community. To show your support for our open source intiative you may send an email to mailto://open@nytimes.com and let us know how you are using this module.

Please visit http://open.nytimes.com, our open source blog to see what we are up to, http://code.nytimes.com to see some of our open projects and then check out http://nytimes.com for the latest news!

SUBROUTINES

xml_node_count $xml, $xpath, $count, $name;

Test passes if the XML string in $xml contains $count of the element specified by the XPath in $xpath. Optionally name the test with $name.

xml_min_nodes $xml, $xpath, $count, $name;

Test passes if the XML string in $xml contains at least $count of the element specified by the XPath in $xpath. Optionally name the test with $name.

xml_max_nodes $xml, $xpath, $count, $name;

Test passes if the XML string in $xml contains at most $count of the element specified by the XPath in $xpath. Optionally name the test with $name.

EXPORTS

Everything in "SUBROUTINES" by default, as expected.

SEE ALSO

Test::XML

Test::More

Test::Builder

XML::LibXML

XPath Specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath

XPath For Dummies: http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/xpath_syntax.asp

Our code blog: http://open.nytimes.com

AUTHOR

Adam J Kaplan, <akaplan@nytimes dotcom<gt>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2008 by Adam J Kaplan and The New York Times

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.7 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.