assertText/assertNoText doesn't really show what you could see in the browser (bad docs)

Thanks for reporting this! I think that, as you've reported, it's a documentation issue:
- assertText/assertNoText do not really show you all the text that a person would see browsing to a page. For instance, form input is a value attribute of an HTML tag, and all tags are stripped out (including attributes), so assertText will not find that. The documentation needs to explain this, and it is currently wrong.
- I think there should be an @see link to assertRaw/assertNoRaw, which you can use for your purposes in this case, since it allows you to match against the full raw HTML (including value attributes of tags).

API Page: http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core%21modules%21simpletest%21lib%21Dru... can not be found.

Could you help me get the correct link?

What happened is that this issue was filed 2 years ago and the method moved to a different class. So, this situation of a link in an issue to api.drupal.org not working is fairly common in Drupal 8 development, especially for issues as old as this.

To find the new class/method: Go to api.drupal.org and search for "assertText" in Drupal 8. You will find several results; two of them are for methods called assertText and others are for methods called assertText* (with a suffix). Click through to the two methods that are actually called assertText and see which one has the problem; you'll find that it is AssertContentTrait::assertText().

Also note that assertNoText needs a patch; that should be on the same class/trait.

Tagging for Amsterdam. Issue summary needs update with what is the actual problem, which jhodgdon explained in #1 - then fixing it (documenting things better).

As I am attending the mentored sprint session at DrupalCon Amsterdam, I added a proposed resolution section to the original issue post.

fixing the amsterdam sprint tag to amsterdam2014

First patch proposal from the Drupal Dev Days Montpellier 2015.
Hope this might help.

Great start, thanks! I have a few suggestions:

1. +++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
   @@ -485,9 +485,9 @@ protected function assertNoEscaped($raw, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
   +   * HTML tags in this text will be stripped out of the contents.
   +   * This includes e.g. text inside input elements, so use assertRaw()
   +   * to find text inside / including HTML.
       *
   

   This is factually correct and gives the information that we need, great! But it needs a little editing for English grammar/pronunciation/style... and maybe it is a bit confusing to say the HTML tags are stripped... Maybe we need to change the first line too, so instead of saying "text version" it is clearer?

   How about:

   Passes if the page (with HTML stripped) contains the text.

   Note that stripping HTML tags also removes their attributes, such as the values of text fields.

   [I think we can omit the text that says "use assertRaw..." because we have the @see below]

2. +++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
   @@ -503,6 +503,8 @@ protected function assertNoEscaped($raw, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
   +   *
   +   * @see assertRaw()
       */
   

   We need to include the namespaced class name here, not just reference the method name.

3. +++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
   @@ -511,9 +513,9 @@ protected function assertText($text, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
   +   * HTML tags in this text will be stripped out of the contents.
   +   * This includes e.g. text inside input elements, so use assertNoRaw()
   +   * to find text inside / including HTML.
       *
   

   Same as in assertText.

4. +++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
   @@ -529,6 +531,8 @@ protected function assertText($text, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
   +   *
   +   * @see assertNoRaw()
       */
   

   Needs namespace and class here too.

I'm new to namespace concept.
In our current task, does it mean that I have to replace

@see assertRaw()

with

@see core\modules\simpletest\src\AssertContentTrait\assertRaw()

?

It's actually:

@see \Drupal\simpletest\AssertContentTrait::assertRaw()

Read about namespaces here:
https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core!modules!system!core.api.php/group...
(if you need background information, try some of the links in that text, such as the first one that takes you to PHP.net.

You can find the namespace for a class at the top of the file in a line like

namespace Drupal\simpletest\AssertContentTrait;

But in documentation we prefix this with a \
and the method should be separated from the class name with a ::

So in summary, the method assertRaw() on AssertContentTrait would look like:
@see \Drupal\simpletest\AssertContentTrait::assertRaw()

Hope this helps...

@jhodgdon All modifications, as proposed in your comment #11 are done and I've generated the corresponding patch.
Thank you for your patience and your advices to a newbie.

Just a last question.
As mentionned in the link about namespaces you gave, shouldn't the @see mention be written down as follows ?
@see \Drupal\Core\simpletest\AssertContentTrait::assertRaw()

that is, whith ...\Core\..., the simpletest module belonging to Core ?

No. Take a look at the namespace line at the top of this AssertContentTrait file. ;)

Anyway, the patch looks pretty good! A few things to fix:

1. +++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
   @@ -392,6 +392,8 @@ protected function assertNoLinkByHref($href, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
   +   *
   +   * @see
       */
   

   This line is incomplete.

2. +++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
   @@ -503,17 +504,18 @@ protected function assertNoEscaped($raw, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
   +   * Passes if the page (with HTML stripped) doesn't contains the text.
   

   Grammar: Should be "doesn't contain"

Looks good to me, thanks very much!

Thanks everyone. Just one thing looks out of place here:

+++ b/core/modules/simpletest/src/AssertContentTrait.php
@@ -392,6 +392,8 @@ protected function assertNoLinkByHref($href, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
+   *
+   * @see \Drupal\simpletest\AssertContentTrait::assertRaw()
    */
   protected function assertRaw($raw, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {

It looks like we're adding an @see on this method to itself?

This issue only changes documentation, so per https://www.drupal.org/core/beta-changes, this can be completed any time during the Drupal 8 beta phase. Committed and pushed to 8.0.x. Thanks!

Tagging the backport to 7.x as a novice task