Automated Documentation Tests: Blog about testing documentation.
https://honeycode.aws/blog/ADT
It’s no surprise that many engineers are now using automated tests as a way to ensure their code works as expected. In fact, it’s become so common that an entire industry has emerged around the practice of DevOps, with a focus on expanding the practice of automated testing to all elements of development, from writing code to deploying it in production.
But how do you ensure the accuracy of your documentation? This is a question that engineers and technical writers have grappled with for years, often relying on manual processes like peer reviews or asking customers directly via surveys or other channels. But what if there was an easier way?
Enter Automated Documentation Tests (ADT). ADT is a technique that enables you to write automated tests for your documentation, and is based on the same principles used by engineers who write automated tests for their code.
Automated Documentation Tests: Blog about testing documentation.
When we write documentation, we have to provide confidence that the information is correct. How do we know the commands and configuration described in our docs are actually valid?
The manual solution is for someone to go through each document, check the syntax and parameters, run the commands… this is tedious and error-prone. Fortunately, there’s a better way!
Automated Checks for Documentation Accuracy
Automated Documentation Tests are an implementation of Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) with a focus on the documentation that is produced by a team.
Automated Documentation Tests (ADT) is a new way to test your documentation. ADT has been created with the help of the Honeycode team at AWS.
Before we get into how you can build an ADT, let’s talk about what it is, and why it’s great.
ADT is a test suite for your documentation. It runs on AWS infrastructure, and is fully managed by Honeycode. You can easily create ADTs for testing readme files in your GitHub repositories. There are many benefits to using them:
You can easily test multiple versions of your documentation, as well as different language versions.
ADTs are accessible from the command line interface (CLI), so you can integrate them into your continuous integration workflow.
You can customize tests to meet the needs of your project, and share them with others in your organization or open source community.
There are many different kinds of tests for software. Some of these tests can be applied to documentation. The most common test for documentation is peer review. You can also use automated testing in your documentation process to help you find inconsistencies in your work.
There are two main types of automated testing: linters and validators. These tools can help you catch many common mistakes such as broken links, misspellings, and formatting errors. One example of a linter is the F5 tool that helps you check HTML code, CSS styling, and other html formatting issues. This tool will not validate your grammar or spelling, but it will help you make sure that your code is correct.
Another type of automated test is validators. Validators check the validity of your code against a standard. For example, if you have a link that points to another website, a validator will check the link against the target website’s domain name to make sure the link is correct. The validator might also make sure that your links use the correct protocol (such as http:// or https://).
The single most useful thing you can do to improve the quality of your software is to write automated tests. For traditional application software, this is a well-known idea that has been around since at least the early 1990s (see, for example, Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck). Automated tests allow you to make changes quickly and with more confidence that you’re not breaking something. And they provide documentation about how your software actually works – documentation that doesn’t get out of date because it’s always right.
Documentation is a significant part of our software toolkits. We write documentation to make sure that users can use our software and solve their problems. But we also write documentation to make sure our development team, customer support team, marketing team, and other stakeholders understand our software.
Documentation is a significant part of our software toolkits. We write documentation to make sure that users can use our software and solve their problems. But we also write documentation to make sure our development team, customer support team, marketing team, and other stakeholders understand our software.
Documentation is a significant part of our software toolkits. We write documentation to make sure that users can use our software and solve their problems. But we also write documentation to make sure our development team, customer support team, marketing team, and other stakeholders understand our software.
Documentation is a significant part of our software toolkits. We write documentation to make sure that users can use our software and solve their problems. But we also write documentation to make sure our development team, customer support team, marketing team, and other stakeholders understand our software.