comment on

Please forgive the ambiguous title, but I'm not sure how to phrase this.

I have what must be a common scenario: I validate some input based on various factors, but if validation fails, the user sees the same error message. (That is, this is not a case where the user gets a message saying "Please fix field #3".) How do I write tests for each possibility, given that there's no difference in the program's function for any particular kind of failure?

Pseudo-code:

if ( ! defined $input_object) {
  $self->redirect('error');
} elsif ($input_object->{'foo'} > 10) {
  $self->redirect('error');
} elsif ($input_object->{'bar'} !~ m/^\d{3}$/ ){
  $self->redirect('error');
}

$self->process($input_object);
[download]

It's important to test each of these cases (an undefined input object, a 'foo' input greater than 10, a 'bar' input that's not three digits) to make sure they fail, but I don't know how to make sure I'm testing each thing when the result of each one is the same.

In reply to How to Test When User Sees Same Thing? by Anonymous Monk

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