CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2015/oss E1574 BKS
Expertiza is a web application where students can submit and peer-review learning objects (articles, code, web sites, etc). It is used in select courses at NC State and by professors at several other colleges and universities. <ref>Template:Expertiza GitHub Page</ref>
Introduction
Our contribution in this project is to write feature test for assignment submission by student. The test would mock steps taken by the student to manually submit the assignment.
Problem Statement
Once an assignment is created by the instructor the only call to action for the student is assignment submission. Currently, there is no feature test for assignment submission. The goal is to understand the flow of the assignment submission by student manually and mock this flow in the Feature Tests using RSpec and Capybara.
Feature Test
Feature specs test your application's functionality from the outside either by simulating a browser or by headless browser simulation.
Assumptions
To successfully implement each scenario in the test, the following assumptions are taken:
- The feature test will use the development environment. In particular, it will use the expertiza_development database.
- A student entry is assumed to be present in the database. The credentials for this student is student13 as username and password as password.
- The assignment created for testing contain no teams and topic selections.
- Users require to first run the ["assignment_creation.rb"], before they can run the tests.
Steps for manual submission
Before analyzing code, one must make themselves familiar with the steps involved in assignment submission by student on Expertiza. The steps involved are:
- Login with valid student username and password
- Click on an assignment to submit
- Click on "Your Work"
- Paste the link or browse to the file containing your work
- Click on "Upload Link" or "Upload File" to submit deliverable
Creating the Tests
Gems involved
The gems used in feature testing are rspec-rails and capybara
rspec-rails
Rspec-rails is a testing framework for Rails 3.x and 4.x. It supports testing of models, controllers, requests, features, views and routes. It does this by accepting test scenarios called specs.<ref>https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails</ref>
capybara
Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem.<ref>https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara</ref>
Test Scenarios
Based on the steps involved in manual submission of the assignment, the following test scenarios are considered:
- scenario 'student with valid credentials'
- scenario 'submit only valid link to ongoing assignment'
- scenario 'submit only invalid link to ongoing assignment'
- scenario 'submit only existing file to ongoing assignment'
- scenario 'submit both valid link and file to ongoing assignment'
- scenario 'submit link for finished assignment'
- scenario 'submit file for finished assignment'
Code written for feature test
Code for the feature test consist in two files assignment_creation.rb and student_assignment_submission.rb.
assignment_creation.rb
As the name mentions, this file consist code for creating assignments. When this file is run, two assignments are created: one in ongoing/submission phase and other in finished state. The name of the ongoing assignment is FeatureTest and the name of the finished assignment is LibraryRailsApp. Furthermore this file also adds student13 as participant to both the assignments. The steps in this file are written in capybara using rspec framework. And the scenario is run with js enabled, so the tester can view the steps in a browser.
require 'rails_helper' require 'spec_helper' RSpec.feature 'assignment creation' do before(:each) do # Login as instructor visit root_path fill_in('login_name', :with => 'instructor6') fill_in('login_password', :with => 'password') click_on('SIGN IN') expect(page).to have_content('Manage') # Steps to create new ongoing public assignment # Step 1: Browse to new public assignment within('.content') do click_on('Assignments') end click_button 'New public assignment' # Step 2: Fill in details of new ongoing public assignment fill_in('assignment_form_assignment_name',:with => 'FeatureTest') select('CSC 517 Fall 2010', from: 'assignment_form_assignment_course_id') fill_in('assignment_form_assignment_directory_path',:with => 'csc517/oss') fill_in('assignment_form_assignment_spec_location',:with => 'feature test') check('assignment_form_assignment_availability_flag') click_on('Create') # Step 3: Specify grading rubrics for new ongoing public assignment click_on('Rubrics') within('#questionnaire_table_ReviewQuestionnaire') do select('Animation', from: 'assignment_form[assignment_questionnaire][][questionnaire_id]') end within('#questionnaire_table_AuthorFeedbackQuestionnaire') do select('Author feedback OTD1', from: 'assignment_form[assignment_questionnaire][][questionnaire_id]') end expect(page).to have_content("Rubrics") click_on('submit_btn') expect(page).to have_content("successfully",:wait=>5) # Step 4: Specify due dates for the new ongoing public assignment click_on('Due dates') fill_in('datetimepicker_submission_round_1',:with => '2015/11/10 23:00') fill_in('datetimepicker_review_round_1',:with => '2015/11/10 23:00') click_on('submit_btn') # Step 5: Add student13 as a participant to the new ongoing public assignment click_on('Manage...', :wait=>5) within(:xpath, "//table/tbody/tr[.//td[contains(.,'FeatureTest')]]") do find(:xpath, ".//a/img[@src='/assets/tree_view/add-participant-24.png']/..").click end expect(page).to have_content("Participants",:wait=>5) fill_in('user_name', :with => 'student13') click_on('add_a') # Steps to create new finished public assignment click_on('Manage...', :wait=>5) # Step 1: Browse to new public assignment click_button 'New public assignment' # Step 2: Fill in details of new finished public assignment fill_in('assignment_form_assignment_name',:with => 'LibraryRailsApp') select('CSC 517 Fall 2010', from: 'assignment_form_assignment_course_id') fill_in('assignment_form_assignment_directory_path',:with => 'csc517/rails') fill_in('assignment_form_assignment_spec_location',:with => 'rails application') check('assignment_form_assignment_availability_flag') click_on('Create') # Step 3: Specify grading rubrics for new finished public assignment click_on('Rubrics') within('#questionnaire_table_ReviewQuestionnaire') do select('Animation', from: 'assignment_form[assignment_questionnaire][][questionnaire_id]') end within('#questionnaire_table_AuthorFeedbackQuestionnaire') do select('Author feedback OTD1', from: 'assignment_form[assignment_questionnaire][][questionnaire_id]') end expect(page).to have_content("Rubrics") click_on('submit_btn') expect(page).to have_content("successfully",:wait=>5) # Step 4: Specify due dates for the new finished public assignment click_on('Due dates') fill_in('datetimepicker_submission_round_1',:with => '2015/9/9 23:00') fill_in('datetimepicker_review_round_1',:with => '2015/9/9 23:00') click_on('submit_btn') # Step 5: Add student13 as a participant to the new finished public assignment click_on('Manage...',:wait=>5) within(:xpath, "//table/tbody/tr[.//td[contains(.,'LibraryRailsApp')]]") do find(:xpath, ".//a/img[@src='/assets/tree_view/add-participant-24.png']/..").click end expect(page).to have_content("Participants",:wait=>5) fill_in('user_name', :with => 'student13') click_on('add_a') end scenario 'checked', :js => true do click_on('Manage...',:wait=>5) expect(page).to have_content 'FeatureTest' expect(page).to have_content 'LibraryRailsApp' # Logout find(:xpath, "//a[@href='/auth/logout']").click end end
student_assignment_submission.rb
This file consists of the test scenarios discussed in the Test Scenario section. The steps mainly comprises of selecting either the FeatureTest or LibraryRailsApp assignment and submitting a link or file. Again these steps are written in capybara using RSpec. But unlike assignment_creation.rb, these tests run with js disabled and hence are executed without a browser. The following are the contents of the file:
require 'rails_helper' require 'spec_helper' RSpec.feature 'student assignment submission' do before(:each) do visit root_path fill_in 'User Name', :with => 'student13' fill_in 'Password', :with => 'password' click_on 'SIGN IN' end scenario 'student with valid credentials' do expect(page).to have_content 'Assignment' end scenario 'submitting only valid link to ongoing assignment' do click_on 'FeatureTest' click_on 'Your work' fill_in 'submission', :with => 'http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/efg/517/f15/schedule' click_on 'Upload link' expect(page).to have_content 'http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/efg/517/f15/schedule' end scenario 'submitting only invalid link to ongoing assignment' do click_on 'FeatureTest' click_on 'Your work' fill_in 'submission', :with => 'http://' click_on 'Upload link' expect(page).to have_content 'bad URI(absolute but no path)' end scenario 'submitting only existing file to ongoing assignment' do click_on 'FeatureTest' click_on 'Your work' attach_file('uploaded_file', File.absolute_path('./spec/features/student_submission_spec.rb')) click_on 'Upload file' expect(page).to have_content 'student_submission_spec.rb' end scenario 'submitting link and file to ongoing assignment' do click_on 'FeatureTest' click_on 'Your work' fill_in 'submission', :with => 'http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/efg/517/f15/assignments' click_on 'Upload link' attach_file('uploaded_file', File.absolute_path('./spec/features/users_spec.rb')) click_on 'Upload file' expect(page).to have_content 'http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/efg/517/f15/assignments' expect(page).to have_content 'users_spec.rb' end scenario 'submitting link for finished assignment' do click_on 'LibraryRailsApp' click_on 'Your work' expect(page).to have_no_button('Upload link') end scenario 'submitting file for finished assignment' do click_on 'LibraryRailsApp' click_on 'Your work' expect(page).to have_no_button('Upload file') end end
Running the tests
The following are steps required to run the test
- Clone the repository in a new directory
$ mkdir review $ cd review $ git clone https://github.com/shrenujgandhi/expertiza.git
- Check if you are able to start rails server.
$ rails s
In case you don't have a database with student and instructor entries then download the dump from https://drive.google.com/a/ncsu.edu/file/d/0B2vDvVjH76uESEkzSWpJRnhGbmc/view. Extract its contents. Open the terminal, traverse to that directory and type the following command
$ mysql -u root -p expertiza_development < expertiza_scrubbed_2015_08_14.sql password:
Then change the directory to rails application and run the following command
$ rake db:migrate
- Type the command to create assignment
rspec spec/features/assignment_creation.rb
- Type the command to run tests for assignment submission
rspec spec/features/student_submission_spec.rb
Test Results=
Project Resources
GitHub Link Video Tutorial Images