Validate date

[jbouzekri]

Hi,

A lot of API manipulate date.

How can I use native functionnality of your tool to do it ? Or do I need to write my own extension ?

Thx

Regards

[svanoort]

Hi @jbouzekri,
Could you be more specific about your date handling needs? I'm assuming JSON API responses, but XML is also allowed too. The challenge with dates is that they are usually expressed as one of many string formats; in many cases, the best solution is to treat them as strings and use the regex comparator to validate date responses. However, it would certainly be reasonable to add more date handling facilities (especially generator functions for sample data).

Cheers,
Sam

[jbouzekri]

Sorry for the late reply.
In my case I have 3 use cases I would like to test :

• I provide a subscription and I have some API endpoints which increase or decrease an expiration date by a fixed amount (timedelta)
• I have the created_at and updated_at attributes managed by the ORM
• and a bunch of other dates like last_connection_date, ...

Regards

[svanoort]

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking, does this sound about right?

• A new comparator 'valid_date_format', which takes input string A (from a query) and tries to parse it using the expected time/date format format (argument B) and returns False if it won't parse
• Possible a new 'between' comparator that checks a value falls inside start/end of a range
• A new validator type: 'between_dates' which extends the between operator, and takes start/end values plus a format string

validators:
 - 'between_dates': {query: 'document.1.createdDate', start: '01-01-2015', end: '07-07-2015', format: 'MM-DD-YYYY'}

Long term, it's time to start considering adding an embedded expression language to the framework for more complex operations (or at least something that concisely supports function transformations on inputs). Potentially just escape out and allow raw python, although that has security implications. (Open to thoughts here!).

[jbouzekri]

This would be a good start to manipulate date.
The only thing missing for this first version would be a reference to today or utcnow.

[svanoort]

Do you mean in the between_dates validator? If not, please explain further.

[jbouzekri]

For example : by allowing a start:'utcnow', you could test that the date is in the future.
Or in the eq validator.

[svanoort]

@jbouzekri Hmm, okay -- as with any date handling, there are edge cases to be aware of but getting a basic implementation together is quite reasonable now that we've split it into reasonable pieces.

Right now, we can tentatively schedule this feature for the 1.7.0 release aimed for late December, but it's likely it might slip into the next release after that; there is currently quite a bit of work left on large & critical features (Python 3 support, improved parsing and variable use, and Unicode handling fixes).

If you'd like to help make it happen sooner, I'd certainly welcome a PR to add it to the PyRestTest core, and there should be a number of existing examples in the code that you can use as starting points!

[svanoort]

On second thought, make that January, just in case.

[jbouzekri]

This is not urgent. I have use cases related to dates but it can wait. As you have said you have nicely split the task in simpler ones. I cannot promise I will be able to work on a PR before January too but if I have the time, I will gladly work on it. Thanks for your feedback as always.