Grammar-Based Testing Using Realistic Domains in PHP

This paper presents an integration of grammar-based testing in a framework for contract-based testing in PHP. It relies on the notion of gtypes, that make it possible to assign domains to data, by means of contract assertions written inside the source code of a PHP application. Then a test generation tool uses the contracts to generate relevant test data for unit testing. Finally a runtime assertion checker validates the assertions inside the contracts (among others membership of data to gtypes) to establish the conformance verdict. We introduce here the possibility to generate and validate complex textual data specified by a grammar written in a dedicated grammar description language. This approach is tool-supported and experimented on the validation of web applications.