SPF Testing System


The SPF Testing System is a collection of perl scripts, unix shell
scripts (used to run the perl scripts) and test data files.  It is
designed to see how well an SPF implementation conforms to the official
SPF specification, how well it conforms to the common API used by
several different SPF implementations, and to catch many common bugs.
It is far from complete in all respects and more tests will likely be
added in the future.




**** Parser/verification tests ****

These tests are designed to make sure the SPF implementations
correctly parse SPF records and detect syntax errors.  This is the
kind of thing that many of the web based "SPF wizards" and verifiers
should be tested on.

At this time, only the PHP and libspf-alt implementations are able to
do these kinds of checks, and the PHP is not able to run this test
suite.

Information about the format of the datafiles can be found in
test_parse.txt

Datafiles:

test_parser.txt         This datafile contains constructed SPF records
                        designed to test the implementation's parser.
                        It is designed to detect corner cases and
                        things that I suspected might catch bugs in
                        libspf-alt.

test_adopt_roll.txt     This datafile contains (munged) SPF records
                        that have been registered on the SPF Adoption
                        Roll.  It gives SPF implementors an idea of
                        the real-world garbage that can be found in
                        SPF records.

                        

Programs:

test_parser.pl          This is the perl program that does the actual
                        checking.

tests_parser            This is a shell script that checks the
                        test_parser.txt datafile.

tests_adopt_roll        This is a shell script that checks the
                        test_adopt_roll.txt datafile.



**** SPF evaluation tests ****

These tests are designed to make sure the SPF implementations
correctly evaluate SPF records and DNS errors.

At this time, only the Perl, libspf and libspf-alt implementations are
able to run these checks.

Information about the format of the datafiles can be found in
test.txt

Datafiles:

test.txt                This datafile contains constructed SPF queries
                        that designed to test the implementation's
                        ability to correctly evaluate SPF records.  It
                        contains tests to make sure the implementation
                        conforms to the SPF specification, and the
                        common SPF API.  (Yes, these two should be
                        separated.) 

test_rfc_examples.txt   This datafile contains SPF queries that are
                        found in the SPF specification document.  The
                        "Expanded Examples" are currently not in this
                        dataset.  Currently, only the libspf-alt
                        implementation can run this test because it
                        requires overriding SPF information for
                        example.{com,org,net}.


Programs:

test.pl                 This is the perl program that does the actual
                        checking.

tests_single            This is a shell script that checks the
                        test.txt datafile, one query at a time. 

tests_many              This is a shell script that checks the
                        test.txt datafile sending many queries to
                        spfquery.  This tests to make sure that the
                        SPF implementation correctly cleans up after
                        each individual query.