Attrition provides the ability to display specific data HTML attributes based on the configuration of your mix environment.

For example, testing and QA can be performed using the data-qa or data-test attribute, while these attributes are effectively removed from your production markup. Attrition accomplishes this through the use of a compile time macro that injects overrideable functions.

If correctly configured and enabled, Attrition provided functions return HTML attributes that can be utilized for testing, QA and beyond.

If no cofiguration is present, Attrition provided functions simply return an empty string, thus obfuscating their contents in non-configured envrionments.

The intentional default redaction of test data and attributes reduces the risk of scraping or accidentally exposing sensitive data.

Currently Attrition only supports the data-qa and data-test HTML attributes.

develop |> attrition |> deploy

Installation

Attrition can be installed by adding attrition to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:attrition, "~> 0.0.1"}
  ]
end

Fetch the dependencies

mix deps.get

Setup

Setup for attrition can be accomplished in two easy steps!

1. Environment Configuration

In the configuration file for the environment you wish to render the data attributes, you must set the Attrition.Reveal module as the value for the :data_module key.

For example:

config :attrition, data_module: Attrition.Reveal

Note After updating your configuration, you must force the Attrition dependency to recompile in order to pick up on the configuration change.

mix deps.compile attrition --force

The absence of a configuration, or an invalid configuration will result in no data attributes displayed.

2. Use Attrition

Ideally, Attrition is invoked at the view definition through the use macro. This allows for Attrition provided functions to be called in both the view and template without needing to provide an alias. This implementation provides a simple, light-weight interface without additional cognitive load.

# application_web.ex

  def view do
    quote do
      ...

      use Attrition
    end
  end

Usage

Once setup and configuration is complete, using Attrition provided functions is very straightforward. These functions can be invoked at both the view and template. All attrition provided functions can also be overridden wherever they are used.

Example implementation of the data_qa function:

  <div<%= data_qa "example-count" %> class="example">

NOTE: In the example above, make note of the spacing. Ensure that there is not a space between the element <div and the opening output capture tag <%=. This will ensure the resulting html is formatted correctly.

Example enabled attribute output:

<div data-qa="example-count" class="example">

Hidden attribute output:

<div class="example">

Testing and Developing with data attributes

Find the data-qa attribute value using Floki

Floki is a simple HTML parser that can quickly traverse HTML nodes. You can read more about Floki here.

Finding your data-qa attribute with Floki example

{:ok, html} = Floki.parse_document(html)

Floki.find(html, "[data-qa=example-count]")

View data-qa elements in the Browser

Using a browser extension, such as data-qa Highlighter you can easily view the elements on the page that have the data-qa attribute.