Adding Asserts

Our basic Hurl file is now:

# Our first Hurl file, just checking
# that our server is up and running.
GET http://localhost:3000
HTTP 200

Currently, we’re just checking that our home page is responding with a 200 OK HTTP status code. But we also want to check the content of our home page, to ensure that everything is ok. To check the response of an HTTP request with Hurl, we have to describe tests that the response content must pass.

To do so, we’re going to use asserts.

As our endpoint http://localhost:3000 is serving HTML content, it makes sense to use XPath asserts. If we want to test a REST API or any sort of API that serves JSON content, we could use JSONPath asserts instead. There are other type of asserts but every one shares the same structure. So, let’s look how to write a XPath asserts.

HTML Body Test

Structure of an assert

An assert consists of a query and a predicate. As we want to test the value of the HTML title tag, we’re going to use the XPath expression string(//head/title).

1. Asserts are written in an [Asserts] section, so modify basic.hurl file:

# Our first Hurl file, just checking
# that our server is up and running.
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"

2. Run basic.hurl:

$ hurl --test basic.hurl
basic.hurl: Running [1/1]
basic.hurl: Success (1 request(s) in 19 ms)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executed files:  1
Succeeded files: 1 (100.0%)
Failed files:    0 (0.0%)
Duration:        19 ms

There is no error so everything is good!

3. Modify the test value to “Movies Bax”

# Our first Hurl file, just checking
# that our server is up and running.
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Bax"

4. Run basic.hurl:

$ hurl --test basic.hurl
basic.hurl: Running [1/1]
error: Assert failure
  --> basic.hurl:7:0
   |
 7 | xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Bax"
   |   actual:   string <Movies Box>
   |   expected: string <Movies Bax>
   |

basic.hurl: Failure (1 request(s) in 22 ms)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executed files:  1
Succeeded files: 0 (0.0%)
Failed files:    1 (100.0%)
Duration:        23 ms

Hurl has failed now and provides information on which assert is not valid.

Typed predicate

Decompose our assert:

• xpath "string(//head/title)"
  is the XPath query
• == "Movies Box"
  is our predicate to test the query against

You can note that tested values are typed:

• xpath "string(//head/title)" == "true"
  tests that the XPath expression is returning a string, and this string is equal to the string true
• xpath "boolean(//head/title)" == true
  tests that the XPath expression is returning a boolean, and the boolean is true

Some queries can also return collections. For instance, the XPath expression //button is returning all the button elements present in the DOM. We can use it to ensure that we have exactly two <h3> tag on our home page, with count:

1. Add a new assert in basic.hurl to check the number of <h3> tags:

# Checking our home page:
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"
xpath "//h3" count == 2

2. We can also check each <h3>’s content:

# Checking our home page:
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"
xpath "//h3" count == 2
xpath "string((//h3)[1])" contains "Popular"
xpath "string((//h3)[2])" contains "Featured Today"

XPath queries can sometimes be a little tricky to write but modern browsers can help writing these expressions. Try open the JavaScript console of your browser (Firefox, Safari or Chrome) and type $x("string(//head/title)") then press Return. You should see the result of your XPath query.

3. Run basic.hurl and check that every assert has been successful:

$ hurl --test basic.hurl
basic.hurl: Running [1/1]
basic.hurl: Success (1 request(s) in 11 ms)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executed files:  1
Succeeded files: 1 (100.0%)
Failed files:    0 (0.0%)
Duration:        15 ms

HTTP Headers Test

We are also going to add tests on the HTTP response headers with explicit header asserts. As our endpoint is serving UTF-8 encoded HTML content, we can check the value of the Content-Type response header.

1. Add a new assert at the end of basic.hurl to test the value of the Content-Type HTTP header:

# Checking our home page:
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"
xpath "//h3" count == 2
xpath "string((//h3)[1])" contains "Popular"
xpath "string((//h3)[2])" contains "Featured Today"
# Testing HTTP response headers:
header "Content-Type" == "text/html; charset=utf-8"

Our HTTP response has only one Content-Type header, so we’re testing this header value as string. The same header could be present multiple times in an HTTP response, with different values. In this case, the header query will return collections and could be tested with count or includes.

For HTTP headers, we can also use an implicit header assert. You can use either implicit or explicit header assert: the implicit one allows you to only check the exact value of the header, while the explicit one allows you to use other predicates (like contains, startsWith, matches etc...).

2. Replace the explicit assert with implicit header assert:

# Checking our home page:
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
# Implicitly testing response headers:
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"
xpath "//h3" count == 2
xpath "string((//h3)[1])" contains "Popular"
xpath "string((//h3)[2])" contains "Featured Today"

The line

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

is testing that the header Content-Type is present in the response, and its value must be exactly text/html; charset=utf-8.

In the implicit assert, quotes in the header value are part of the value itself.

Finally, we want to check that our server is creating a new session.

When creating a new session, our Express application returns a Set-Cookie HTTP response header. So to test it, we can modify our Hurl file with another header assert.

3. Add a header assert on Set-Cookie header:

# Checking our home page:
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"
xpath "//h3" count == 2
xpath "string((//h3)[1])" contains "Popular"
xpath "string((//h3)[2])" contains "Featured Today"
# Testing HTTP response headers:
header "Content-Type" == "text/html; charset=utf-8"
header "Set-Cookie" startsWith "x-session-id="

For Set-Cookie header, we can use the specialized Cookie assert. Not only we’ll be able to easily tests cookie attributes (like HttpOnly, or SameSite), but also it simplifies tests on cookies, particularly when there are multiple Set-Cookie header in the HTTP response.

Hurl is not a browser, one can see it as syntactic sugar over curl. Hurl has no JavaScript runtime and stays close to the HTTP layer. With others tools relying on headless browser, it can be difficult to access some HTTP requests attributes, like Set-Cookie header.

So to test that our server is responding with a HttpOnly session cookie, we can modify our file and add cookie asserts.

4. Add two cookie asserts on the cookie x-session-id:

# Checking our home page:
GET http://localhost:3000

HTTP 200
[Asserts]
xpath "string(//head/title)" == "Movies Box"
xpath "//h3" count == 2
xpath "string((//h3)[1])" contains "Popular"
xpath "string((//h3)[2])" contains "Featured Today"
# Testing HTTP response headers:
header "Content-Type" == "text/html; charset=utf-8"
cookie "x-session-id" exists
cookie "x-session-id[HttpOnly]" exists

5. Run basic.hurl and check that every assert has been successful:

$ hurl --test basic.hurl
basic.hurl: Running [1/1]
basic.hurl: Success (1 request(s) in 11 ms)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executed files:  1
Succeeded files: 1 (100.0%)
Failed files:    0 (0.0%)
Duration:        20 ms

Performance Test

TODO: add duration assert

Recap

Our Hurl file is now around 10 lines long, but we’re already testing a lot on our home page:

• we are testing that our home page is responding with a 200 OK
• we are checking the basic structure of our page: a title, 2 <h3> tags
• we are checking that the content type is UTF-8 HTML
• we are checking that our server has created a session, and that the cookie session has the HttpOnly attribute

You can see now that launching and running requests with Hurl is fast, really fast.

In the next session, we’re going to see how we chain request tests, and how we add basic check on a REST API.