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:imagesdir: ../../images/

= Testing Serializers and Parsers



Currently, the build generates the serializers and parsers from a provided `mspec` specification.

A typical full round-trip test for the model, parsers and serializers would look as follows:

* Starting from a byte array
* The parser is used to parse the byte array
* The parsed model instance is compared with an expected model
* If the expected model matched the expected one the model is serialized back to a byte array
* The resulting byte array is compared to the original byte array
* If the byte arrays are identical, the round-trip is regarded ok

Doing this manually would require a lot of manual object construction and validation, so we created a framework for creating such tests.

As XML, no matter what you think about it, allows simple and easy readable descriptions these tests are provided as `XML files`.

All generated model classes allow parsing and serializing to XML via `Jackson`.

== Structure of a test

A typical test looks like this:

----
  <testcase>
    <name>Read Input Registers Request</name>
    <raw>000000000006ff0408d20002</raw>
    <root-type>ModbusTcpADU</root-type>
    <parser-arguments>
      <response>false</response>
    </parser-arguments>
    <xml>
      <ModbusTcpADU className="org.apache.plc4x.java.modbus.readwrite.ModbusTcpADU">
        <transactionIdentifier>0</transactionIdentifier>
        <unitIdentifier>255</unitIdentifier>
        <pdu className="org.apache.plc4x.java.modbus.readwrite.ModbusPDUReadInputRegistersRequest">
          <startingAddress>2258</startingAddress>
          <quantity>2</quantity>
        </pdu>
      </ModbusTcpADU>
    </xml>
  </testcase>
----

As you can see, the `name` provides a simple human readable name for the test which is used for reporting success and failure.

The `raw` element contains the `hex-representation` of the `binary input`.

After that the `root-type` specifies the base type used for parsing this data. In above example the test will use the `ModbusTcpADUIO.serialize` and `ModbusTcpADUIO.parse` methods for serializing and parsing.

Some parsers require additional parameters for parsing. In above example the Modbus protocol can't decide if something is a request or response from the data itself, so we have to pass that information in using a `parser-arguments` argument.

The final element is the `xml` element, which contains the XML representation of the parsed object.

Each test implements exactly the test-strategy sketched above, however for comparing the parsed and the expected model, we use `XMLUint` to serialize the parsed model to XML and compare that to the given XML in the test-case declaration.

== Structure of a testsuite

Multiple tests are usually wrapped into a testsuite document.

In general this is just a container with a given testsuite `name` and a number of `testcase` elements.

One important setting however controls the endianness of the protocol in general.

This is controlled with a `bigEndian` attribute in the testsuite root element.

An example testsuite document looks as follows:

----
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<test:testsuite xmlns:test="https://plc4x.apache.org/schemas/parser-serializer-testsuite.xsd"
                bigEndian="true">

  <name>Allen-Bradley DF1</name>

  <testcase>
    ...
  </testcase>

  <testcase>
    ...
  </testcase>

  <testcase>
    ...
  </testcase>

  <testcase>
    ...
  </testcase>

</test:testsuite>
----

== The Junit runner

All logic is implemented in the `plc4j-utils-test-utils` module, so make sure to add the following test-dependency:

----
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.apache.plc4x</groupId>
      <artifactId>plc4j-utils-test-utils</artifactId>
      <version>{project.version}</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
----

In order to run these tests as part of the build, as a last step we need to create a test-runner class.

This is generally just a hand-full of boilerplate code, telling the test which document to use for testing.

Following code snippet sort of looks the same for every testsuite:

----
package org.apache.plc4x.java.modbus;

import org.apache.plc4x.test.parserserializer.ParserSerializerTestsuiteRunner;

public class ModbusIOTest extends ParserSerializerTestsuiteRunner {

    public ModbusIOTest() {
        super("/testsuite/ModbusTestsuite.xml");
    }

}
----

Here the document `ModbusTestsuite.xml` is located in the directory: `src/test/resources/testsuite/`.
