Some pages in FitNesse that serve special purposes.

The following pages are automatically included into other pages. Some are included at the stop, others are included at the bottom. Some may be included only into certain kinds of pages. However, they all follow one identical rule. A given page will be included only if it is a brother or uncle of the target page.

Consider PageHeader. PageHeader is included at the top of all of it's sibling pages. If FitNesse did not have sub pages, this would make perfect sense. The page named PageHeader would simply be included into every other page. But FitNesse does have sub pages. So the rule is that if a page includes PageHeader then the children of that page will include it as well. This rule is recursive, so the childrens
children also include PageHeader etc.

Now imagine that you have a hierarchy that looks like this:

Bob is at the top level and there is no PageHeader at the top level. So nothing is included into Bob.
Angela has a sibling page named PageHeader so Bob.PageHeader is included into Angela. And since Angela includes it, the children of Angela will include it too. So Alexis will also include Bob.PageHeader.

Clear? Just remember brothers and uncles.


PageHeader

Included at the top of a page. Often used for common titles, or links.

PageFooter

Included at the bottom of a page. Used for copyrights, footers, and common links.

SetUp

Included at the top of test pages only. Used to initialize the test and supply Import tables.

TearDown

Included at the bottom of test pages only. Used to decommission resources used in a test.

SuiteSetUp

Included at the top of a test page and before SetUp. When a suite is run, this page will only be included once at the top of the suite.

SuiteTearDown

Included at the bottom of a test page only, and after TearDown. When a suite is run this page will be included only once at the end of the suite.

ScenarioLibrary

These pages are intended for scenario tables. They are included just after the SetUp in any SLIM test. Unlike the other special pages, all brother and uncle ScenarioLibrary pages are included. The oldest (grandest uncle) is included first. The brother, if it exists, is included last. This allows younger ScenarioLibrary pages to override older ones.

TemplateLibrary

These pages act as a marker to find templates to show as available for insertion when editing a page. All children of a TemplateLibrary will be shown in the drop-down list of templates available for insertion. Unlike the other special pages, all brother and uncle TemplateLibrary pages are included. The oldest (grandest uncle) is included first. The brother, if it exists, is included last. This allows younger TemplateLibrary pages to override older ones.


Suites.

A special word about suites. If the suite has a deep hierarchy, and there are SuiteSetUp and/or SuiteTearDown pages below the suite page, they will not be included (unless the tests at those lower levels will also be executed). The SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown that are included in a suite run are (by default) the pages that are the nearest brothers or uncles of the Suite page.

The behaviour, that only the nearest brothers and uncles are executed, can be customized by defining a variable ALL_UNCLE_SUITE_SETUPS and give it the value true in the root of the suite. The effect of this definition is that all SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown up in the hierarchy (i.e. all uncle pages with these names) are executed before each test, similar to what is done for ScenarioLibrary. Inside the suite the highest (grand uncle) SuiteSetUp is added first, followed by lower ones just before the first test in the (sub)suite requiring them. And the nearest SuiteTearDown is executed immediately after the last test in the (sub)suite. So each SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown is executed only once, immediately before (or after) the (sub)suite that requires them.