The web-platform-tests Project 
The web-platform-tests Project is a W3C-coordinated attempt to build a cross-browser testsuite for the Web-platform stack. Writing tests in a way that allows them to be run in all browsers gives browser projects confidence that they are shipping software that is compatible with other implementations, and that later implementations will be compatible with their implementations. This in turn gives Web authors/developers confidence that they can actually rely on the Web platform to deliver on the promise of working across browsers and devices without needing extra layers of abstraction to paper over the gaps left by specification editors and implementors.
Setting Up the Repo
Clone or otherwise get https://github.com/w3c/web-platform-tests.
Running the Tests
The tests are designed to be run from your local computer. The test environment requires Python 2.7+ (but not Python 3.x).
On Windows, be sure to add the Python directory (c:\python2x, by default) to
your %Path% Environment Variable,
and read the Windows Notes section below.
To get the tests running, you need to set up the test domains in your
hosts file. The
following entries are required:
127.0.0.1 web-platform.test
127.0.0.1 www.web-platform.test
127.0.0.1 www1.web-platform.test
127.0.0.1 www2.web-platform.test
127.0.0.1 xn--n8j6ds53lwwkrqhv28a.web-platform.test
127.0.0.1 xn--lve-6lad.web-platform.test
0.0.0.0 nonexistent-origin.web-platform.test
If you are behind a proxy, you also need to make sure the domains above are excluded from your proxy lookups.
Running Tests Manually
The test server can be started using
./wpt serve
This will start HTTP servers on two ports and a websockets server on
one port. By default one web server starts on port 8000 and the other
ports are randomly-chosen free ports. Tests must be loaded from the
first HTTP server in the output. To change the ports, copy the
config.default.json file to config.json and edit the new file,
replacing the part that reads:
"http": [8000, "auto"]
to some port of your choice e.g.
"http": [1234, "auto"]
Running Tests Automatically
Tests can be run automatically in a browser using the run command of
the wpt script in the root of the checkout. This requires the hosts
file setup documented above, but you must not have the
test server already running when calling wpt run. The basic command
line syntax is:
./wpt run product [tests]
On Windows: You will need to preceed the prior command with
python or the path to the python binary.
where product is currently firefox or chrome and [tests] is a
list of paths to tests. This will attempt to automatically locate a
browser instance and install required dependencies. The command is
very configurable; for examaple to specify a particular binary use
wpt run --binary=path product. The full range of options can be see
with wpt run --help and wpt run --wptrunner-help.
Not all dependencies can be automatically installed; in particular the
certutil tool required to run https tests with Firefox must be
installed using a system package manager or similar.
On Debian/Ubuntu certutil may be installed using:
sudo apt install libnss3-tools
And on macOS with homebrew using:
brew install nss
Command Line Tools
The wpt command provides a frontend to a variety of tools for
working with and running web-platform-tests. Some of the most useful
commands are:
wpt serve- For starting the wpt http serverwpt run- For running tests in a browserwpt lint- For running the lint against all testswpt manifest- For updating or generating aMANIFEST.jsontest manifestwpt install- For installing the latest release of a browser or webdriver server on the local machine.
Submodules
Some optional components of web-platform-tests (test components from third party software and pieces of the CSS build system) are included as submodules. To obtain these components run the following in the root of your checkout:
git submodule update --init --recursive
Prior to commit 39d07eb01fab607ab1ffd092051cded1bdd64d78 submodules
were requried for basic functionality. If you are working with an
older checkout, the above command is required in all cases.
When moving between a commit prior to 39d07eb and one after it git
may complain
$ git checkout master
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
[…]
followed by a long list of files. To avoid this error remove
the resources and tools directories before switching branches:
$ rm -r resources/ tools/
$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'
When moving in the opposite direction, i.e. to a commit that does have
submodules, you will need to git submodule update, as above. If git
throws an error like:
fatal: No url found for submodule path 'resources/webidl2/test/widlproc' in .gitmodules
Failed to recurse into submodule path 'resources/webidl2'
fatal: No url found for submodule path 'tools/html5lib' in .gitmodules
Failed to recurse into submodule path 'resources'
Failed to recurse into submodule path 'tools'
then remove the tools and resources directories, as above.
Windows Notes
On Windows wpt commands mut bre prefixed with python or the path
to the python binary (if python is not in your %PATH%).
Alternatively, you may also use
Bash on Ubuntu on Windows
in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update build, then access your windows
partition from there to launch wpt commands.
Certificates
By default pregenerated certificates for the web-platform.test domain
are provided in the repository. If you wish to generate new
certificates for any reason it's possible to use OpenSSL when starting
the server, or starting a test run, by providing the
--ssl-type=openssl argument to the wpt serve or wpt run
commands.
If you installed OpenSSL in such a way that running openssl at a
command line doesn't work, you also need to adjust the path to the
OpenSSL binary. This can be done by adding a section to config.json
like:
"ssl": {"openssl": {"binary": "/path/to/openssl"}}
On Windows using OpenSSL typically requires installing an OpenSSL distribution. Shining Light provide a convenient installer that is known to work, but requires a little extra setup, i.e.:
Run the installer for Win32_OpenSSL_v1.1.0b (30MB). During installation, change the default location for where to Copy OpenSSL Dlls from the System directory to the /bin directory.
After installation, ensure that the path to OpenSSL (typically,
this will be C:\OpenSSL-Win32\bin) is in your %Path%
Environment Variable.
If you forget to do this part, you will most likely see a 'File Not Found'
error when you start wptserve.
Finally, set the path value in the server configuration file to the
default OpenSSL configuration file location. To do this,
copy config.default.json in the web-platform-tests root to config.json.
Then edit the JSON so that the key ssl/openssl/base_conf_path has a
value that is the path to the OpenSSL config file (typically this
will be C:\\OpenSSL-Win32\\bin\\openssl.cfg).
Publication
The master branch is automatically synced to http://w3c-test.org/.
Pull requests are
automatically mirrored except those
that modify sensitive resources (such as .py). The latter require
someone with merge access to comment with "LGTM" or "w3c-test:mirror" to
indicate the pull request has been checked.
Finding Things
Each top-level directory matches the shortname used by a standard, with some exceptions. (Typically the shortname is from the standard's corresponding GitHub repository.)
For some of the specifications, the tree under the top-level directory represents the sections of the respective documents, using the section IDs for directory names, with a maximum of three levels deep.
So if you're looking for tests in HTML for "The History interface",
they will be under html/browsers/history/the-history-interface/.
Various resources that tests depend on are in common, images, and
fonts.
Branches
In the vast majority of cases the only upstream branch that you
should need to care about is master. If you see other branches in
the repository, you can generally safely ignore them.
Contributing
Save the Web, Write Some Tests!
Absolutely everyone is welcome (and even encouraged) to contribute to test development, so long as you fulfill the contribution requirements detailed in the Contributing Guidelines. No test is too small or too simple, especially if it corresponds to something for which you've noted an interoperability bug in a browser.
The way to contribute is just as usual:
- Fork this repository (and make sure you're still relatively in sync with it if you forked a while ago).
- Create a branch for your changes:
git checkout -b topic. - Make your changes.
- Run the lint script described below.
- Commit locally and push that to your repo.
- Send in a pull request based on the above.
Issues with web-platform-tests
If you spot an issue with a test and are not comfortable providing a pull request per above to fix it, please file a new issue. Thank you!
Lint tool
We have a lint tool for catching common mistakes in test files. You
can run it manually by starting the lint executable from the root of
your local web-platform-tests working directory like this:
./wpt lint
The lint tool is also run automatically for every submitted pull request, and reviewers will not merge branches with tests that have lint errors, so you must fix any errors the lint tool reports.
In the unusual case of error reports for things essential to a
certain test or that for other exceptional reasons shouldn't prevent
a merge of a test, update and commit the lint.whitelist file in the
web-platform-tests root directory to suppress the error reports.
For more details, see the lint-tool documentation.
Adding command-line scripts ("tools" subdirs)
Sometimes you may want to add a script to the repository that's meant to be used from the command line, not from a browser (e.g., a script for generating test files). If you want to ensure (e.g., for security reasons) that such scripts won't be handled by the HTTP server, but will instead only be usable from the command line, then place them in either:
-
the
toolssubdir at the root of the repository, or -
the
toolssubdir at the root of any top-level directory in the repository which contains the tests the script is meant to be used with
Any files in those tools directories won't be handled by the HTTP
server; instead the server will return a 404 if a user navigates to
the URL for a file within them.
If you want to add a script for use with a particular set of tests but
there isn't yet any tools subdir at the root of a top-level
directory in the repository containing those tests, you can create a
tools subdir at the root of that top-level directory and place your
scripts there.
For example, if you wanted to add a script for use with tests in the
notifications directory, create the notifications/tools subdir and
put your script there.
Test Review
We can sometimes take a little while to go through pull requests because we have to go through all the tests and ensure that they match the specification correctly. But we look at all of them, and take everything that we can.
OWNERS files are used only to indicate who should be notified of pull requests. If you are interested in receiving notifications of proposed changes to tests in a given directory, feel free to add yourself to the OWNERS file. Anyone with expertise in the specification under test can approve a pull request. In particular, if a test change has already been adequately reviewed "upstream" in another repository, it can be pushed here without any further review by supplying a link to the upstream review.
Getting Involved
If you wish to contribute actively, you're very welcome to join the [email protected] mailing list (low traffic) by signing up to our mailing list. The mailing list is archived.
Join us on irc #testing (irc.w3.org, port 6665). The channel is archived.