Doc Detective: The Documentation Testing Framework

Doc Detective is doc content testing framework that makes it easy to keep your docs accurate and up-to-date. You write tests, and Doc Detective runs them directly against your product to make sure your docs match your user experience. Whether it’s a UI-based process or a series of API calls, Doc Detective can help you find doc bugs before your users do.

Doc Detective ingests test specifications and text files, parses them for testable actions, then executes those actions in a browser. The results (PASS/FAIL and context) are output as a JSON object so that other pieces of infrastructure can parse and manipulate them as needed.

This project handles test parsing and web-based UI testing---it doesn't support results reporting or notifications. This framework is a part of testing infrastructures and needs to be complemented by other components.

Components

Doc Detective has multiple components to integrate with your workflows as you need it to:

• Doc Detective (this repo): A standalone tool that enables testing without a separate Node project.
• Doc Detective Core: An NPM package that provides the testing functionality.
• Doc Detective Docs: Source files for doc-detective.com.

Install

1. Install prerequisites:

   • Node.js (tested on v18 and v20)

2. In a terminal, install Doc Detective globally:

   npm i -g doc-detective

   If you don't install Doc Detective globally, you'll be prompted to install the first time you run an npx command.

   Note: If you're working in a cloned doc-detective repository, run npm i to install local dependencies or the npx command in the next step will fail.

Run tests

To run your tests, use the runTests command:

npx doc-detective runTests

By default, Doc Detective scans the current directory for valid tests, but you can specify your test file with the --input argument. For example, to run tests in a file named doc-content-inline-tests.md, run the following command:

npx doc-detective runTests --input doc-content-inline-tests.md

To customize your test, file type, and directory options, create a .doc-detective.json config file. If a .doc-detective.json file exists in the directory when you run the comment, Doc Detective loads the config. Otherwise, you can specify a config path with the --config argument.

npx doc-detective runTests --config .doc-detective.json

Note: All paths are relative to the current working directory, regardless where the config file is located.

You can override config options with command-line arguments. For example, to run tests in a file named tests.spec.json, even if that isn't included in your config, run the following command:

npx doc-detective runTests --config .doc-detective.json --input tests.spec.json

Check out some samples

You can find test and config samples in the samples directory.

Check your test coverage

You can check the test coverage of your documentation source files with the runCoverage command, specifying the source file or directory of source files with the --input argument. Doc Detective identifies potential areas of test coverage with file-format-specific regex, and supports CommonMark syntax natively. If you want to test coverage of a file with different syntax, update the fileTypes object of your config file accordingly.

npx doc-detective runCoverage --config .doc-detective.json --input doc-content.md

Concepts

• Test specification: A group of tests to run in one or more contexts. Conceptually parallel to a document.
• Test: A sequence of steps to perform. Conceptually parallel to a procedure.
• Step: A portion of a test that includes a single action. Conceptually parallel to a step in a procedure.
• Action: The task a performed in a step. Doc Detective supports a variety of actions:
  • checkLink: Check if a URL returns an acceptable status code from a GET request.
  • find: Check if an element exists with the specified selector.
  • goTo: Navigate to a specified URL.
  • httpRequest: Perform a generic HTTP request, for example to an API.
  • runShell: Perform a native shell command.
  • saveScreenshot: Take a screenshot in PNG format.
  • setVariables: Load environment variables from a .env file.
  • startRecording and stopRecording: Capture a video of test execution.
  • typeKeys: Type keys. To type special keys, begin and end the string with $ and use the special key’s enum. For example, to type the Escape key, enter $ESCAPE$.
  • wait: Pause before performing the next action.
• Context: An application and platforms that support the tests.

Roadmap

Future updates may include support for the following items:

• Apps: iOS Safari, Android Chrome, native Windows, native macOS, native Linux
• Platforms: iOS, Android
• Commands: suggestTests stable release

Develop

To develop Doc Detective, clone the repo and install dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/doc-detective/doc-detective.git
cd doc-detective
npm i

To run commands, use the same npx commands as above.

Make sure you review the contributions guide before submitting a pull request.

Contributions

Looking to help out? See our contributions guide for more info. If you can't contribute code, you can still help by reporting issues, suggesting new features, improving the documentation, or sponsoring the project.

License

This project uses the MIT license.