Writing perl unit tests which need to simulate a web browser with cookie support connecting to a server from multiple network interfaces is challenging. Why would I need to do that? Well, when you work for a company whose business is providing controlled internet access to hotels, these sorts of things come up.
I’m not asking for help — I already know how to approach the problem. I’m just stating a fact. You know, in case anybody was curious about what I’m working on these days.
Not sure if you’re coding in PHP or not, if so this couold be useful.
Nope, this doesn’t involve any PHP, just Perl (Apache/mod_perl, Mason). But I’m always happy to have links to good PHP resources
Are you using WWW::Mechanize?
Yes, we’re using WWW::Mechanize for the browser emulation. The tricky part for my testing is that I need to simulate a computer which switches network interfaces. For example, a laptop that first connects via a wired ethernet port, then later connects via a wireless interface.
To test this, I have to change the MAC address of my test computer on the fly, as well as mucking about with our custom subclass of WWW::Mechanize.