Basic Input and Output
Input and output testing deal with the data portions of your application. Unlike the static content, you have to deal with a variety of different formats and issues.
For every page that allows input, you should plan to use non-ASCII data in your testing. Every field that accepts free text input should be tested with strings containing non-ASCII values.
Test: Basic Input and Output
Basic I/O testing should be performed on every text field in your application. Each form field or input should have non-ASCII sequences typed in and stored. There are a variety of special cases that should be checked.
The following tests do not apply to fields, such as numeric or date entry fields, in which the expected input is locale affected or must be parsed. We'll deal with those later. These tests apply to regular text fields that allow free or somewhat free input.
For each field:
- Enter extended Latin values into each field and submit the form.
Text fields should accept valid input and the values should then display
correctly in all subsequent pages.
- The input does not cause an error.
- The input value is displayed correctly on subsequent screens that display the field value. (No mozibake, no question marks)
- Operations on the data work correctly
- The item is correctly sorted in lists
- The item can be edited, deleted, and renamed
- The name is found when searching or organizing data.
- If fields have restricted input (for example, they require ASCII only input), then appropriate error messages should be displayed prompting the user to input a valid value.
Test data should include:
- Latin-1 extended characters such as: éèçäüÄÜêÊ
- Windows 1252 extended characters such as: ƒŒŽœžŠ€
- The Euro symbol (U+20AC) €
- Enter Asian text values into each field and submit the form.
Text fields should accept valid input and the values should then display
correctly in all subsequent pages. The same tests apply to this data
as for Latin text.
Test data should include:
- Wide (zenkaku, full-width) ASCII (which is multibyte): ＡＢＣＤ
- Kanji/Hanza/Han (ideographic) characters: 日本語三菱不実
- Hiragana (Japanese syllabic) characters: にほんご
- Katakana (Japanese syllabic) characters: ニホンゴ
- Narrow (hankaku) Japanese characters:
- Problem characters (Microsoft mapping or trailing backslash): ソース, ～
Steps
1. Install keyboards and fonts for non-English languages on your Windows or *nix machines. See Learn to Type Japanese and Other Languages for an introduction to the topic.
2. Input non-ASCII strings. Use both European and Asian characters to prevent "accidental" support for characters because the backend system supports one or the other.
To ensure complete coverage, use both Western and Far East Asian characters. Bidi (Arabic or Hebrew) sequences can also be used to good effect, but you might not want to start with these, as they will have odd effects on your page display.
3. Be sure to test each component and to watch data input on one page in subsequent pages.
Hint: using wide ASCII is an excellent starter test, since the characters really are multi-byte, but can be read easily
