Trac, Testlink and XML-RPC

Trac is a web-based project and defect management system that has gained considerable market share for a wide range of commercial and open-source projects. Easy to set up, configure and maintain, it's rich feature set offers some surprisingly advanced capabilities. It's highly configurable without being overly complex - in a word, elegant. And if the default functionality of Trac isn't enough, there's a trove of 3rd-party plugins available for it, including the XML-RPC plugin, which makes the Trac database queriable via -- you guessed it -- XML-RPC.

Testlink is a testcase management software bit. To be honest I don't like it because it's bloated and clunky. There, I've said it. But its probably one of the better open-source solutions for testcase management out there, so I won't complain too much.

Testlink offers some limited support for integration with Trac using the XML-RPC plugin. Unfortunately, if you're using authenticated XML-RPC in Trac, Testlink can't handle it. I don't know too many people who would want to put an unauthenticated XML-RPC interface to their defects database on a network, private or public. Anyway, I hacked some support for authenticated XML-RPC into the Testlink code. It's pretty easy, so if anyone is having this problem getting Testlink to talk to Trac over authenticated XML-RPC, here's what you do. Changes are in bold red.

[Note: please don't ask me how to set up Trac, the XML-RPC plugin or Testlink.]

modified /opt/lampp/htdocs/testlink/cfg/trac.cfg.php, added:

define('BUG_TRACK_XMLRPC_HOST', 'http://username:password@192.168.0.123');

modified /opt/lampp/htdocs/testlink_18RC1/lib/bugtracking/int_trac.php:

$this->m_xmlrpcClient = new IXR_Client(BUG_TRACK_XMLRPC_HOST.$tracProjectName.'/login/xmlrpc');

modified /opt/lampp/htdocs/testlink_18RC1/third_party/xml-rpc/class-IXR.php

function query() {
$args = func_get_args();
$method = array_shift($args);
$request = new IXR_Request($method, $args);
$length = $request->getLength();
$xml = $request->getXml();
$r = "\r\n";
$credentials = "";
if ($this->user != "") {
$credentials = base64_encode($this->user . ":" . $this->pass);
}
$request = "POST {$this->path} HTTP/1.0$r";
$request .= "Host: {$this->server}$r";
if ($credentials != "") {
$request .= "Authorization: Basic {$credentials}$r";
}

function IXR_Client($server, $path = false, $port = 80, $timeout = false) {
if (!$path) {
// Assume we have been given a URL instead
$bits = parse_url($server);
$this->server = $bits['host'];
$this->port = isset($bits['port']) ? $bits['port'] : 80;
$this->user = isset($bits['user']) ? $bits['user'] : '';
$this->pass = isset($bits['pass']) ? $bits['pass'] : '';