Re: [xml-dev] Testing XML don't use xUnit

[Uche Ogbuji <uche@ogbuji.net>]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com> wrote:

>> It sounds like you are suggesting it's bad to have xpaths in junit
>> tests?  ...and to use Schematron instead?
>>
>
> Yes. Because changes to the structure of the xml will break the JUnit
> test whereas Schematron assertions are resilient to that.

Obviously if the test needs to handle the possibility of different
structures, then just use the appropriate xpath / xquery in the test
(!)

If I'm missing something here, please provide an example.

It sounds to me as if XUnit does not allow you to set context for its paths.  I don't know XUnit at all, but I'm guessing from what Ihe says.  That would definitely be woefully brittle.  Schematron of course gives you a great deal of flexibility with not just context, but phases, etc.

I've used Schematron a lot at constraint boundaries using *mechanics* similar to what one would call unit testing, but of course that's a very different sort of "test."

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