Introduction
This is test data which is useful for finding issues with Confluence features and plugins. If you are a plugin developer, you should use it.
Test data – why it is useful
Developers tend to perform testing as users called “Test User” and use pages called “Test Page”
QA Engineers are looking to find problems, and we know that it is more effective to use more ‘challenging’ test data. This may include unicode characters, lengthy titles, XSS strings, etc. We also tend to use non-standard configurations – in Confluence this may mean a site using a non-default theme, or with anonymous access enabled, or with customised HTML headers on each page.
Sample page showing test data examples
Over time, the Confluence QA team has built up a collection of test data including those cases mentioned above. We recently made it easy for Confluence Developers to start up a test instance using that data, which has the following advantages:
- Test data is already set up
- You can use existing spaces, users and pages, rather than needing to create them
- Test data is more challenging that simply “Test Page”, “Test Blog” etc. – it uses attack strings, unicode characters, lengthy titles, and so on
- Users have XSS attack strings in their names – it is no longer possible to create these through the UI
- Easily generate ideas for test cases
- By looking at the available data, you might consider a test case that you had previously forgotten – e.g. anonymous use, space themes, non-default groups
- Instance has been customised
- Various customisations are in place, which may show up inconsistencies with features that work as expected in default mode only
Test data for Confluence Plugin Developers
The Confluence test data is now available for external developers. You can use the Atlassian SDK to automatically start up Confluence with this data for testing plugins. See the instructions.
Please comment here if you find this data useful. In particular, add your thoughts on whether this be the default data when starting an instance with atlas-run and/or atlas-debug.