- From: Mike Pennisi <mike@bocoup.com>
- Date: Wed, 3 May 2017 16:03:41 -0400
- To: public-webappsec@w3.org
- Cc: Simon Stewart <simon.m.stewart@gmail.com>, david.burns@theautomatedtester.co.uk, Philip Jägenstedt <foolip@google.com>, James Graham <james@hoppipolla.co.uk>, Boaz Sender <boaz@bocoup.com>
Hello all,
The Permissions specification operates on state that cannot be influenced in
a way that is both standard and automated. This is largely by design.
Permission fundamentally originates from the user, so allowing arbitrary
code to control it doesn't make much sense.
...in production settings. There is an important use case for controlling
state programmatically: automated tests.
The ability to write automated tests for the Permissions API would allow
shared test suites like Web Platform Tests [1] to promote consistency among
browsers, and it would also allow application developers to more thoroughly
test their own code.
The Permissions API isn't the only web standard that would benefit from
dedicated testing support. All of the spec's "powerful features" are in a
similar position. In all cases, programmatic control is undesirable for
production settings but essential for conformance testing and application
testing.
This is currently being discussed on the public-test-infra mailing list [2],
specifically in the context of the developing Web Bluetooth API. In that
thread, we're considering two very different approaches:
1. Each standard defines a JavaScript API for testing with the understanding
that it is only to be enabled under highly-controlled circumstances
2. Each standard includes extensions to the WebDriver specification using
the mechanism it defines for this purpose [3]
Members of the Chromium team have prototyped a straw man implementation of
the first approach for the Web Bluetooth API. I'm personally interested in
exploring the second approach. I think that the relatively small internal
state of the Permissions API make it a great candidate for experimentation
along these lines.
Before getting started on a patch, I wanted to gauge interest from those
involved with the specification. How do folks here feel about trying this
out?
Mike Pennisi
Bocoup
[1] https://github.com/w3c/web-platform-tests
[2]
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-test-infra/2017AprJun/0018.html
[3] https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/webdriver-spec.html#extensions
Received on Wednesday, 3 May 2017 20:04:17 UTC