Summary of changes

Last 15 days web site changes

These are the changes that happened to the Cactus web site for the past 15 days since the last site update (excluding the todo and changes pages which are modified too often):

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Release changes

Cactus 1.5 (released on 23 November 2003)

  • fix The HttpClient 2.0 rc2 jar packaged with Cactus 1.5-rc1 was only working with JDK 1.4. The HttpClient team has provided a new jar compiled with the JDK 1.3, which we have included in our release. (VMA)
  • fix In the Cactus/Ant integration, user-defined tomcat-users and web.xml are now correctly replacing the default version provided by Cactus. This is for the Tomcat 4.x and 5.x containers. (VMA)
  • fix The Jetty Test Setup was not shutting Jetty down if an error ocurred during setUp. (VMA) Thanks to James Stangler. Fixes bug 24072.

Cactus 1.5-rc1 (released on 26 October 2003)

  • fix The Cactus Ant integration now reports the HTTP error code when it fails to start the container and timeouts. It was previously doing this but only in debug mode. (VMA) Thanks to Norbert Pabis. Fixes bug 23604.
  • update Update the version of Commons HttpClient in the Cactus distribution to 1.0 rc2. (VMA)
  • fix Fixed and improved logging. It now works with Log4j, JDK 1.4 logging and Commons Simple log. Check the sample servlet application for an example of how to set up Cactus logging. (VMA)
  • add Added new optional cactus.logging.config Cactus property. If specified Cactus will load the properties file pointed by this property and will set each property as a system property. (VMA)
  • update Updated to use AspectJ 1.1.1. When you upgrade to Cactus 1.5-rc1 make sure you update your aspectjrt.jar to version 1.1.1 (the jar is provided in the Cactus distribution). (VMA)
  • add Added an EJB sample application to demonstrate how to perform EJB unit testing with Cactus and how to automate it with the Cactus/Ant integration. (VMA)
  • fix When using the new ServletTestSuite wrapper around pure JUnit test cases, the setUp() and tearDown() methods were not called. (VMA) Thanks to Alexander Ananiev.
  • fix In the Ant integration, when using the <cactus> task with an EAR, the test webapp context was not correctly set. (VMA) Thanks to Jonathan Kovacs. Fixes bug 22794.
  • fix Fixed the JettyTestSetup class so that it stops the running Jetty server at the end of the test suite execution. (VMA) Thanks to James Stangler. Fixes bug 22249.
  • update The Cactus distribution now packages commons-httpclient 2.0 RC1 (we were previously including version 2.0 beta2). (VMA)
  • fix Support for WebLogic 7.x is now working fine. Fixed bugs in the WebLogic 7.x configuration: the weblogic.xml file was not correctly copied in the WEB-INF directory of the cactified war, and an NPE happened when the bea home property was not set. It now tries to guess it from the cactus.home.weblogic7x property if not set. In addition, the configuration has also been greatly simplified. (VMA)
  • update In the cactifywar Ant task, changed the default realm name that is used when adding Cactus default configuration data. It was previously Cactus test realm. It is now myrealm. The reason is that the default WebLogic configuration creates a myrealm realm and thus using this name makes our Cactus configuration for WebLogic much simpler. It doesn't affect the other containers as they do not seem to check for the realm name. (VMA)
  • add Added the ability to define the JBoss port that will be used in the Ant integration to poll if the JBoss server is up and running. Note: This value will not modify the port of the default JBoss configuration (it is still 8080). However, it is useful for users who have defined their own JBoss configuration and are using a port other than 8080. (VMA) Thanks to Florin Vancea.
  • fix Fixed bug in Eclipse plugin build where the plugin version was not correctly resolved. (VMA) Thanks to Christopher Marshall. Fixes bug 21892.

Cactus 1.5-beta1 (released on 14 July 2003)

  • update Support for WebLogic 7.x has not been tested with Cactus 1.5 and may not work. (VMA)
  • update Support for WebLogic 6.x is still available in the Ant integration. However, it has not been tested as it is no longer possible to download WebLogic 6.x from the BEA web site. It is thus completely untested. (VMA)
  • update Update of jars bundled in the Cactus distribution: Commons Logging 1.0.3, Log4j 1.2.8, HttpClient 2.0beta2, HttpUnit 1.5.3 and JUnit 3.8.1. In addition the requirements for the jars needed to build Cactus were also updated: Checkstyle 3.1 (and the dependent jars: BeanUtils 1.6.1, Collections 2.1, Regexp 1.2 and Antlr 2.7.2). (VMA)
  • add Added a Cactus books section for books covering the Cactus framework. (VMA)
  • update Refactoring of XXXTestCase class hierarchy. Whereas it was previously inheriting from AbstractWebTestCase and AbstractTestCase it is now simply inheriting from JUnit TestCase. Thus all non-public API are now not visible from user (as they should be). This has broken binary compatibility. If you had some framework compiled with Cactus 1.4.1 and using some methods from AbstractWebTestCase or AbstractTestCase, you'll need to recompile it with Cactus 1.5. (VMA)
  • add Added a HttpServletRequestWrapper.setRemoteUser() method to simulate a remote user. Thus, there is now 2 methods to get a remote user: by simulating it as above or by using real BASIC or Form-based authentication. (CML)
  • update Refactored the authentication support by introducing the interface Authentication, which the class AbstractAuthentication now implements. (CML)
  • add Added a quick tutorial for Cactus developers who want to set up their Eclipse environment to work on the Cactus plugins for Eclipse. (VMA)
  • add The WebResponse class now has a method to directly retrieve the status code. (CML)
  • fix When a simulation URL is used and null values are passed for the Server name, Context Path and Servlet Path parameters, calls to Cactus HttpServletRequestWrapper.getServerName(), HttpServletRequestWrapper.getServerPort(), HttpServletRequestWrapper.getContextPath() and HttpServletRequestWrapper.getServletPath() now correctly return the values from the original Request object (and not the wrapped one), handled by the Servlet Redirector. (VMA)
  • update Added verification code in Cactus to verify that the parameters passed to the WebRequest.setURL() method have the correct format and throw an exception if not. (VMA)
  • add Added a RSS feed for Cactus news. (VMA)
  • add The Cactus web site has a new style that is heavily based on CSS. It should provide better printing capabilities and a more consistent look. (CML)
  • fix Cactus was not correctly handling the ComparisonFailure exception introduced by JUnit 3.8.1 and these exceptions were reported as errors instead of failures. (VMA) Thanks to Misak Boulatian. Fixes bug 9544.
  • fix Fixed bug in Cactus exception handling where an invalid test result could result in a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException, thus hiding the real problem. (VMA) Thanks to Melissa White.
  • add Added a new custom Ant task (WebXmlMerge) that merges the content of two web deployment descriptors into one. That includes the definitions of filters and servlets, as well as some security-related elements. (CML)
  • add Allows creating Cactus TestCase without the need for a constructor that takes a String parameter (a default constructor is good enough). Obviously, this feature works only with JUnit 3.8.1 (but Cactus continues to support JUnit 3.7). (VMA)
  • add Added ability to add any additional HTTP parameters to the request used by Cactus to the Form-based authentication security URL. (VMA)
  • add Added support for running pure JUnit TestCase on the server side using Cactus. This is possible by using a new ServletTestSuite Test Suite. (VMA)
  • fix Fixed bug where a simulation URL would be used even when none has been defined (Reminder: a simulation URL is defined by calling WebRequest.setURL()). (VMA) Thanks to Helen Rehn.
  • add Added a timeout for the <runservertests> Ant task so that the verification that the container is started is stopped if this timeout is reached (a build exception is raised). (VMA)
  • remove Moved some Ant tasks that were previously in the Cactus Ant tasks; they are now in the Ant Integration project. They are the tasks used to start/stop the containers and the runservertests task. It is now recommended to use the Ant Integration. (VMA)
  • update Improved (and normalized) build system. This change should not affect nor be visible by Cactus end-users. However, Cactus power users building Cactus from sources will appreciate. (VMA)
  • update Improved test classe names in the Servlet Sample application. (VMA)
  • update The Servlet Sample build is now using the Cactus Ant Integration. (VMA)
  • add New Cactus Ant Integration. It provides new custom Ant tasks such as <cactifywar>, <cactus> which makes executing Cactus tests from an Ant build script extremely easy. (CML)
  • update Modified the build process to generate the Cactus web site by removing the use of Stylebook and replacing it with an XSL stylesheet. In addition, added several new features: support for subdirectories, support for dynamic menu items and sitemap generation. (VMA)
  • fix The Cactus runservertests custom Ant task has been improved and it is now propagating correctly Ant references to the targets you defined for starting the container, stopping it and runnning the Cactus tests. Previously, it was only propagating the Ant properties. (VMA)
  • update Added stack trace filtering to the ServletTestRunner. Stack frames in the JUnit framework classes as well as in the Cactus base test case classes are filtered out. (CML)
  • add The Cactus web site now provides online documentation for both the CVS HEAD version and the last released version. (VMA)
  • fix Enable the ServletTestRunner to run in an environment where it is not allowed to set system properties. In such cases, the cactus.properties configuration file needs to be on the server classpath. (CML)
  • update Implemented server-side XSLT transformations in the ServletTestRunner. The code is based on the TraX API but uses reflection to avoid a direct runtime dependancy. (CML)
  • add Added automated Ant scripts for JBoss/Jetty 3.x. (VMA)
  • fix Fixed bug where users using a Locale which does not format numbers with dots (".") had issues with the JUnitReport Ant XSL stylesheet. The Servlet Test Runner code now forces a US Locale. (CML)
  • add Added new extension class to help unit test JSP Taglibs. See the TestJspTagLifecycle test class in the sample-servlet application for help on using it. (VMA) Thanks to Christopher Lenz.
  • update Improved error handling when dealing with invalid Cookies. (VMA)
  • fix Fixed a potential bug with classloaders. On the server side, Cactus looks for the TestCase class by searching first the WebApp Classloader and then the Context ClassLoader. However, the Context ClassLoader is only searched if an Exception (subclass of Exception) is raised. Thus, if a NoClassDefFoundError had been raised, Cactus would not have searched in the Context ClassLoader. (VMA) Thanks to Roumen B. Antonov.
  • add Added support for internationalization (double byte characters) for sending back test results. This allows Cactus to be used with any character set. (VMA) Thanks to Atsushi Hasegawa.
  • fix Fixed bug where a redirector overriden by calling WebRequest.setRedirectorName() was not used to fetch the Cactus test result (the default redirector specified in the Cactus configuration was used instead). (VMA) Thanks to Pranab Dhar.
  • fix Fixed bug where Cactus was using the deprecated HttpClient PostMethod.setRequestBody(String) which had some bug related to char to byte encoding. Now using the PostMethod.setRequestBody(InputStream) signature. (VMA) Thanks to Stephan Merker.
  • add Added links to Japanese and Korean translations of Cactus. (VMA)
  • add Ability to get a real HTTP Session cookie before the start of the test. This is achieved by calling the new WebRequest.getSessionCookie() method which returns a HttpSessionCookie object that you then add to the HTTP request. Initially suggested by Kyle W. Willkomm. (VMA)
  • add New WebResponse.getCookieIgnoreCase(cookieName) to get the first cookie matching cookieName whatever the case (case-insensitive). (VMA)
  • add Added Form-based authentication support. (VMA) Thanks to Jason Robertson.
  • add Added a tutorial that explains how to build Cactus from the sources. (VMA)
  • add Added a Jetty Sample application to demonstrate how to use the new JettyTestSetup that automatically starts Jetty before a test suite. (VMA)
  • add Added a Jetty integration tutorial. (JRU)
  • add Added a org.apache.cactus.extension.jetty.JettyTestSetup JUnit TestSetup to automatically start Jetty before a test suite is executed. This is really nice to quickly run tests inside any IDE or even from a simple <junit> Ant taks without the need to package and deploy a WAR. In addition, it is real nice to debug tests this way. Moreover, Jetty starts in less than 1 second, making it completely seamless and transparent! We are now at the same order of magnitude as pure JUnit tests in term of speed ... :-). Of course, this is only for Servlet tests ... I am still waiting for an embeddable EJB container that starts in less than 1 second ... (VMA)
  • add Added support for client side begin(...) and end(...) methods. They are called on the client side, before and after every test in the same way as the JUnit setUp() and tearDown() are called before and after each test, but on the server side. (VMA)

Cactus 1.4.1 (released on 31 August 2002)

  • add Added a sample (and thus a test for Cactus) for HttpUnit integration as part of the Cactus sample. (VMA) Thanks to Hirsch Richard.
  • fix Fixed bug in new HttpClient wrapper in Cactus with regards to the headers returned in the HTTP response (they were offset by one and the status line was not returned as a header). (VMA) Thanks to Hirsch Richard.
  • fix Fixed bug where NullPointerException would be thrown by Cactus ServletTestRunner if an exception raised in a test case had not specified a message (i.e. getMessage() returning null). (VMA) Thanks to Micah Williams.
  • fix Some JDK implementation return "null" when Class.getClassLoader() is called to indicate that the given class has been loaded by the bootstrap class loader. This was leading to NullPointerException being thrown by Cactus in some cases. (VMA) Thanks to Gerhard Kreutzer.
  • fix Fixed import bug in sample-servlet which prevented building Cactus from the sources on JDK 1.4. (VMA) Thanks to Ville Skyttä.
  • fix Fixed default properties for the sample application so that it points to the correct HttpClient jar which is packaged with Cactus (the one built on 06/06/2002). (VMA) Thanks to Hirsch Richard.
  • fix Fixed a bug that was preventing having several POST parameters added in the request in beginXXX() methods. (VMA) Thanks to Larry Tambascio.
  • fix The encoding in the sample junit-noframes XSL stylesheet was set to be "US-ASCII". It is now set to "UTF-8". Apparently, XSLT processors are only required to support utf-8 and utf-16, the rest is processor specific. For example your processor might support US-ASCII-7 and others might support US-ASCII. Thanks to Robert Koberg for the explanation! (VMA) Thanks to Dave Hoover.

Cactus 1.4 (released on 25 August 2002)

  • add Added a tutorial that explains how to test JSPs with Cactus. (VMA)
  • fix Fixed JDK 1.2 compatibility (broken in 1.4b1). (VMA) Thanks to David George.
  • fix According to the XML definitions (at least the definitions Mozilla 1.0 got implemented), the <?xml version...> tag should go before the <?xml-stylesheet...> tag. Using them in the wrong order produces an error when Mozilla tries to render it. (VMA) Thanks to Felipe Hoffa.

Cactus 1.4b1 (released on July 31 2002)

  • add It is now possible to assert response codes in endXXX(). For example, you can verify that you servlet has returned a 500 response code. See the tests provided in the Sample Servlet application which is part of the Cactus distribution. This change was possible because we moved the underlying implementation from HttpURLConnection to Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Note: It is still not possible to test a 401 response code (this limitation has been raised to the HttpClient team). (VMA)
  • update Refactored internal code to be able to use different HTTP connection implementation. 2 are currently provided: one using the JDK HttpURLConnection and one using Jakarta Commons HttpClient (the default one). It can be modified by setting the following System property: cactus.connectionHelper.classname = org.apache.cactus.client.JdkConnectionHelper (for the JDK HttpURLConnection). Note that the Servlet Sample test that assert response code will fail with the JDK HttpURLConnection implementation. (VMA)
  • add Cactus now requires the Commons Logging library (commons-logging.jar). It is needed as Commons HttpClient is now using Commons Logging for logging and Cactus depends on HttpClient. Cactus is also now using Commons HttpClient for all its internal logs. This lets us use any underlying logging implementation: Log4j, LogKit, JDK 1.4 Logging, No Logging or SimpleLog (provided with Commons Logging - logs to the console). Check the Config Howto for how to configure logging in Cactus. (VMA)
  • remove Removed deprecated org.apache.cactus.ServletTestRequest class (was deprecated in Cactus 1.2). (VMA)
  • remove Removed deprecated org.apache.cactus.util.ClientCookie class (was deprecated in Cactus 1.2). (VMA)
  • remove Removed deprecated org.apache.cactus.util.AssertUtils class (was deprecated in Cactus 1.2). (VMA)
  • add Added automatic script support for Orion 1.6. (VMA)
  • fix Ant scripts for Resin, Orion, Tomcat 3.2.4, WebLogic 6.1 and WebLogic 7.0 now correctly configured for Cactus BASIC authentication tests. (VMA)
  • add Added automatic script support for WebLogic 7.0. (VMA)
  • fix It seems that it is possible that the test result contain an end of line character and the Cactus WebTestResultParser was choking on this and seeing the returned result as invalid. This has been fixed. (VMA) Thanks to Daniel Dennison. Fixes bug 9544.
  • add Added Test Coverage Reports as part of the Web Site generation. (VMA)
  • update Renamed all external jars used in Cactus by suffixing them with their versions. This is so that Cactus users will know exactly what jars Cactus is packaging. You are of course free to use your own jars and Cactus only packages these jars for your convenience. Cactus nows packages Log4j 1.2.3, AspectJ Runtime 1.0.4, JUnit 3.7, HttpClient 2.0alpha1 built on 6/6/2002, HttpUnit 1.4 and (new) the Servlet API 2.2 and 2.3 jars. The Cactus jars have also been renamed to include the version number in their names. (VMA)
  • fix Cactus Sample can be built using Ant 1.4 (support for Ant 1.4 was broken by a line introduced in Cactus 1.3 that would only work with Ant 1.5. However, this line can easily be commented out). (VMA)
  • fix (It also solves bug Bug #4167 reported by Eric Walker). Modified the jspRedirector.jsp so that it initializes an HTTP Session (session="true"). There is no way I know to make this parameter dynamic so we set it to true as this is the most used case. If one of your test must not have a session created for it, then you can always use the Redirector overriding feature (WebRequest.setRedirectorName(String redirectorName)). (VMA) Thanks to Marc Brette. Fixes bug 8640.
  • fix Fixed bug where the Test Result object which is put in the Servlet Context was not serializable. This might cause some trouble with some containers. (VMA) Thanks to Patrick Lightbody.
  • add Added simulation of Remote IP address and Remote Host Name, i.e. you can now control what request.getRemoteAddr() and request.getRemoteHost() will return. That is useful if your code depends on these values. (VMA) Thanks to Marc Brette.
  • update It is now possible to specify the Cactus properties as System properties (the property names are the same as the ones in cactus.properties). Also if not specified, redirector names are set by default to "ServletRedirector", "JspRedirector" and "FilterRedirector". (VMA)
  • add New Quick start tutorial that explains how to run Cactus tests quickly in Tomcat. (VMA)
  • add A cool new way to quickly execute your test cases: Cactus now has a JUnit Test Runner called ServletTestRunner (it is a servlet) that you start using your browser. See the TestRunner Howto tutorial. (VMA)
  • fix Test classes are now first looked for using the Current classloader (the webapp one for Servlets) and if not found using the context class loader. Previously the order was the revert, which was not logical and could lead to issues. (VMA)
  • update Improved debugging of runservertests task. Simply run Ant in debug mode (ant -debug xxx) and the task will print information. Very useful to know why the runservertests task seems to hang after starting your server ... (VMA)