The Spirit of Schematron in Test Driven Development (TDD)

Test Driven Development is a relatively popular methodology nowadays
and I think XML tools can play crucial aspect in better testing. Testing
frameworks are more than capable of using and testing XML based
applications, but just in case you have ever had trouble, here are a
few tips. XSLT makes for an excellent transformation tool for massaging
XML data. This means it also can be a helpful tool to reduce large XML
data sets to something manageable, whether it is XML or not. For example
[see the] simple XSLT stylesheet that will return content on errors
checking an Atom Feed, which is is exceptionally simple, but hopefully
it makes the point. In the example, you'll also notice that the output
was not contained in a XML Element. Sometimes it is easier to just parse
a simple text file line by line, so this might be that situation. Likewise,
having a designated set of test elements could be helpful -- think reports
transformed to HTML). That said, the goal is not to create some enormous
test framework in XML and XSLT. The real goal is to use a great tool for
transforming XML to something you can use easily. I wouldn't necessarily
suggest trying to validate the content of an element or do complex string
parsing. XSLT 1.0 isn't really the easiest language for string parsing
or complex math with out a little help. You can always add your own
extension functions to help out, but hopefully keeping things simple by
massaging the data gets you 80% of the way. The idea here is make things
palatable to your own tastes... I like XML, but I hate XML Schema and
DTDs. RELAX NG is slightly better option, but when you just want to make
sure some value is present, the above methods can be a simpler solution.
The essence of the above suggestions come from Schematron, an excellent
validation tool that is as simple as knowing XPath. Schematron in fact
has been implemented using XSLT, so adding it to your existing test
framework should be relatively simple. There are times when XML seems
to present a subtle problem within the world of object oriented languages.
It's not a hard problem on a technical level. Working with XML is
relatively simple with many examples and resources. Things get hard when
you don't have good tools to help you along the way. The XML landscape
to your programming language of choice when XML has more than enough
tools to seamlessly integrate testing your XML along side your models,
views, controllers and integrations.