Add tests to legacy web app
What:
I Need to maintain a 'legacy' web app (by legacy I mean the Michael Feathers definition of it does not have unit tests - or any other for that matter). The code is non-oo, (i.e. procedural) so implementing traditional unit tests will be difficult.
So the question was where to start, some of the source files are 6000 lines of code...
Before I can even think about re factoring and migrating (to rails,... shhh), I need to have a solid understanding of the systems operation. I also need confidence that any code changes (I make) produce desired and expected results.
I decided to begin with initiating 'bootstrap' 'unit' tests, (more like functionality-capturing white-hat testing) consisting of Testing/capturing expected behavior via the front end. I have chosen watir because of my interest in ruby and this is a ajax heavy app, other approaches could have been, php simpletest, perl www-mechanize, except neither can handle javascript/ajax applications
