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Test262 Authoring Guidelines

Test Case Names

Test cases should be created in files that are named to identify the feature or API that's being tested.

Take a look at these examples:

  • Math.fround handling of Infinity: test/built-ins/Math/fround/Math.fround_Infinity.js
  • Array.prototype.find use with Proxy: test/Array/prototype/find/Array.prototype.find_callable-Proxy-1.js
  • arguments implements an iterator interface: test/language/arguments-object/iterator-interface.js

Note The project is currently transitioning from a naming system based on specification section numbers. There remains a substantial number of tests that conform to this outdated convention; contributors should ignore that approach when introducing new tests and instead encode this information using the id frontmatter tag.

Test Case Style

A test file has three sections: Copyright, Frontmatter, and Body. A test looks roughly like this:

// Copyright (C) 2015 [Contributor Name]. All rights reserved.
// This code is governed by the BSD license found in the LICENSE file.

/*---
 description: brief description
 info: >
   verbose test description, multiple lines OK.
   (this is rarely necessary, usually description is enough)
---*/

[Test Code]

Copyright

The copyright block must be the first section of the test. The copyright block must use // style comments.

Frontmatter

The Test262 frontmatter is a string of YAML enclosed by the comment start tag /*--- and end tag ---*/. There must be exactly one Frontmatter per test.

Test262 supports the following tags:

description

description: [string]

This is the only required frontmatter tag. It should be a short, one-line description of the purpose of this testcase. This is the string displayed by the browser runnner.

Eg: Insert <LS> between chunks of one string

info

info: [multiline string]

This allows a long, free-form comment.

Eg: Object.prototype.toString - '[object Null]' will be returned when 'this' value is null

negative

negative: [dictionary containing phase and type]

This means the test is expected to throw an error of the given type. If no error is thrown, a test failure is reported.

  • type- If an error is thrown, it is implicitly converted to a string. In order for the test to pass, this value must match the name of the error constructor.
  • phase - Negative tests whose phase value is "early" must produce the specified error prior to executing code. The value "runtime" dictates that the error is expected to be produced as a result of executing the test code.

For best practices on how to use the negative tag please see Handling Errors and Negative Test Cases, below.

For example:

negative:
  phase: early
  type: ReferenceError

es5id

es5id: [es5-test-id]

This tag identifies the section number from the portion of the ECMAScript 5.1 standard that is tested by this test. It was automatically generated for tests that were originally written for the ES5 version of the test suite and are now part of the ES6 version.

When writing a new test for ES6, it is only necessary to include this tag when the test covers a part of the ES5 spec that is incorporated into ES6. All other tests should specify the es6id (see below) instead.

es6id

es6id: [es6-test-id]

This tag identifies the section number from the portion of the ECMAScript 6 standard that is tested by this test.

esid

esid: [spec-id]

This tag identifies the hash ID from the portion of the ECMAScript draft which is most recent to the date the test was added. It represents the anchors on the generated HTML version of the specs. E.g.: esid: sec-typedarray-length. This tag might be used to replace a es6id or further.

When writing a new test for a Stage 3+ spec not yet published on the draft, the pending value can be used while a hash ID is not available.

includes

includes: [file-list]

This tag names a list of helper files that will be included in the test environment prior to running the test. Filenames must include the .js extension.

The helper files are found in the test/harness/ directory. When some code is used repeatedly across a group of tests, a new helper function (or group of helpers) can be defined. Helpers increase test complexity, so they should be created and used sparingly.

timeout

timeout: [integer]

This tag specifies the number of milliseconds to wait before the test runner declares an asynchronous test to have timed out. It has no effect on synchronous tests.

Test authors should not use this tag except as a last resort. Each runner is allowed to provide its own default timeout, and the user may be permitted to override this in order to account for unusually fast or slow hardware, network delays, etc.

author

author: [string]

This tag is used to identify the author of a test case.

flags

flags: [list]

This tag is for boolean properties associated with the test.

  • onlyStrict - only run the test in strict mode
  • noStrict - only run the test in "sloppy" mode
  • module - interpret the source text as module code
  • raw - execute the test without any modification (no helpers will be available); necessary to test the behavior of directive prologue; implies noStrict
  • async - defer interpretation of test results until after the invocation of the global $DONE function
  • generated - informative flag used to denote test files that were created procedurally using the project's test generation tool; refer to the section titled "Procedurally-generated tests" for more information on this process

features

features: [list]

Some tests require the use of language features that are not directly described by the test file's location in the directory structure. These features should be formally listed here.

Test Environment

Each test case is run in a fresh JavaScript environment; in a browser, this will be a new IFRAME; for a console runner, this will be a new process. The test harness code is loaded before the test is run. The test harness defines the following helper functions:

Function Purpose
Test262Error(message) constructor for an error object that indicates a test failure
$ERROR(message) construct a Test262Error object and throw it
$DONE(arg) see Writing Asynchronous Tests, below
assert(value, message) throw a new Test262Error instance if the specified value is not strictly equal to the JavaScript true value; accepts an optional string message for use in creating the error
assert.sameValue(actual, expected, message) throw a new Test262Error instance if the first two arguments are not the same value; accepts an optional string message for use in creating the error
assert.notSameValue(actual, unexpected, message) throw a new Test262Error instance if the first two arguments are the same value; accepts an optional string message for use in creating the error
assert.throws(expectedErrorConstructor, fn) throw a new Test262Error instance if the provided function does not throw an error, or if the constructor of the value thrown does not match the provided constructor 
/// error class
function Test262Error(message) {
//[omitted body]
}

/// helper function that throws
function $ERROR(message) {
    throw new Test262Error(message);
}

/// helper function for asynchronous tests
function $DONE(arg) {
//[omitted body]
}

Handling Errors and Negative Test Cases

Expectations for parsing errors should be declared using the negative frontmatter flag:

/*---
negative:
  phase: early
  type: SyntaxError
---*/

var var = var;

Expectations for runtime errors should be defined using the assert.throws method and the appropriate JavaScript Error constructor function:

assert.throws(TypeError, function() {
  null(); // expect this statement to throw a TypeError
});

Writing Asynchronous Tests

An asynchronous test is any test that include the async frontmatter flag. When executing such tests, the runner expects that the global $DONE() function will be called to signal test completion.

  • If the argument to $DONE is omitted, is undefined, or is any other falsy value, the test is considered to have passed.

  • If the argument to $DONE is a truthy value, the test is considered to have failed and the argument is displayed as the failure reason.

A common idiom when writing asynchronous tests is the following:

var p = new Promise(function () { /* some test code */ });

p.then(function checkAssertions(arg) {
    if (!expected_condition) {
      $ERROR("failure message");
    }

}).then($DONE, $DONE);

Function checkAssertions implicitly returns undefined if the expected condition is observed. The return value of function checkAssertions is then used to asynchronously invoke the first function of the final then call, resulting in a call to $DONE(undefined), which signals a passing test.

If the expected condition is not observed, function checkAssertions throws a Test262Error via function $ERROR. This is caught by the Promise and then used to asynchronously invoke the second function in the call -- which is also $DONE -- resulting in a call to $DONE(error_object), which signals a failing test.

Checking Exception Type and Message in Asynchronous Tests

This idiom can be extended to check for specific exception types or messages:

p.then(function () {
    // some code that is expected to throw a TypeError

    return "Expected exception to be thrown";
}).then($DONE, function (e) {
   if (!(e instanceof TypeError)) {
      $ERROR("Expected TypeError but got " + e);
   }

   if (!/expected message/.test(e.message)) {
      $ERROR("Expected message to contain 'expected message' but found " + e.message);
   }

}).then($DONE, $DONE);

As above, exceptions that are thrown from a then clause are passed to a later $DONE function and reported asynchronously.

Procedurally-generated tests

Some language features are expressed through a number of distinct syntactic forms. Test262 maintains these tests as a set of "test cases" and "test templates" in order to ensure equivalent coverage across all forms. The sub-directories within the src/ directory describe the various language features that benefit from this approach.

Test cases and test templates specify meta-data using the same YAML frontmatter pattern as so-called "static" (i.e. non-generated) tests. The expected attributes differ between test cases and test templates:

  • test cases (*.case)
    • template - name of the sub-directory to locate templates for this test
    • description (see above)
    • info (see above)
    • features (see above; merged with value defined by test template)
  • test templates (*.template)
    • path - location within the published test hierarchy to output files created from this template
    • name - human-readable name of the syntactic form described by this template (used to generate the test file's description field)
    • esid (see above)
    • es5id (see above)
    • es6id (see above)
    • info (see above)
    • features (see above; merged with value defined by test case)

Generated files are managed using the make.py Python script located in the root of this repository.

To create files:

make.py

To remove all generated files:

make.py clean

The executable located at tools/generation/generator.py offers additional control over the generation procedure.

./tools/generation/generator.py --help

Tests expressed with this convention are built automatically following the source files' acceptance into the project. Patches should not include assets built from these sources.