2011/08/05 - Jakarta Cactus has been retired.

For more information, please explore the Attic.

HttpUnit integration

The HttpUnit integration is only available for Cactus v1.2 and later. It won't work with version 1.1 and earlier.

Cactus test cases allow to assert the results of the returned server output stream in an endXXX() method (where XXX is the name of your test case).

Cactus proposes 2 ways of writing your endXXX() methods,

  • Method 1: it allows you to do simple check on the returned stream like checking for returned cookies, HTTP headers and to do assertions on the returned content as a String,
  • Method 2: it allows you to do complex and powerful assertions on the returned content. For example, you can get an HTML DOM view of your returned HTML page and check that a given named table has the correct number of columns, ....
Method 2 is supported through the integration with HttpUnit, meaning you'll benefit from the full assertion power of HttpUnit in your endXXX() method. Method 1 is a class provided by Cactus. Depending on your need you can choose, on a per test case basis, the method you want to use.

Usage

The signature of an endXXX() method is always: 

public void endXXX(WebResponse theResponse)
{
[...]
}

The WebResponse object is passed by the Cactus framework to your endXXX() method. What changes between the 2 methods described above is the class of the WebResponse object that is passed:

  • org.apache.cactus.WebResponse for Method 1,
  • com.meterware.httpunit.WebResponse for Method 2 (HttpUnit)

Method 1: Cactus provided WebResponse object

An example: 
public void endXXX(org.apache.cactus.WebResponse theResponse)
{
  // Get the returned cookies
  Hashtable cookies = theResponse.getCookies();

  // Get the returned content as a string
  String content = theResponse.getText();

  // Do some asserts
  assertEquals(content, "<html><body><h1>Hello world!</h1></body></html>");
[...]
}
For the complete list of all methods available on the WebResponse object, see the associated Javadoc.

Method 2: HttpUnit provided WebResponse object

An example: 
public void endXXX(com.meterware.httpunit.WebResponse theResponse)
{
  WebTable table = theResponse.getTables()[0];
  assertEquals("rows", 4, table.getRowCount());
  assertEquals("columns", 3, table.getColumnCount());
  assertEquals("links", 1, table.getTableCell(0, 2).getLinks().length);
[...]
}
For the complete list of all methods available on the HttpUnit WebResponse object, see the HttpUnit documentation.