lets-start-testing.pdf

Talk at the Chennai.rb meetup, July 2015

1. Lets start testing Chennai.rb meet, 18july2015
2. Lets start testing The agenda: • The Premise • Rspec basics • Testing models • Factories with Factory-girl • Stubbing • Testing UI with Capybara • Testing javascript
3. Speaker Abhishek Yadav @h6165 Freelance Ruby programmer Volunteer at Chennai.rb
4. The premise
5. The Premise • Here: Testing == Automated testing • Why test ? • What about non-automated tests ? • Who writes the tests ? • When to start testing ? • TDD
6. The Premise: why test? • Verification : Does this feature work? • Regression spotting: Something broke something else • Specification: The machine should work this way • Documentation: Test describes how it should behave • Developer feedback: – What I thought will not work – What I thought and what client wanted are different • Code design: Decoupling, cleaner interfaces, better OOP
7. The Premise: Manual testing • The default • Easy to start – needs product knowledge and common sense • Tester.price < Developer.price (generally) • Can cover UI-aesthetics
8. The Premise: Semi automated testing • Need human involvement, but parts are automated • Examples: – Record and playback – Export and compare • Quicker, less boring
9. The Premise: Automated tests: why • Automated • Repeatable • Pipeline-able • [Rspec] Easy (after initial threshold) • [Rspec] Fun + • Benefits of TDD
10. The Premise: Who writes the tests • The developer 'Testers should write tests, not me' is an outdated excuse, and has no place in Ruby world
11. The Premise: When to start testing As early as possible No tests are okay for: Prototype level projects that may not live after 2 months Manual QA is simple and cheap
12. The Premise: When to start testing Its too late signs: Regressions. Implementation slowness. Poor quality in general Developer stress
13. The Premise: When to start testing At some point, cost of manual testing exceeds the cost of automated testing
14. The premise: TDD • Write test first, then the code • Needs specification beforehand as examples • Ideal fit when specs are available (software consulting with requirements) • Leads to good code design
15. The premise: TDD • This talk isn't about TDD • Its about testing, using a popular tool: rspec, generally applicable to Rails web application projects • This may be a stepping stone towards TDD
16. Rspec basics
17. Rspec Basics • It is a test framework and a test runner • We write test-cases using Rspec recommended syntax • For verification, we use Rspec provided assertion methods • We create data on our own (or using factories or fixtures) – Rspec has no involvement there
18. Rspec basics • Test-case syntax: it method: it 'should give 5 for 2 and 3' do # Invoke the code (calculator here) # Verify the result end
19. Rspec basics The syntax: describe methods – Encloses the test cases – Names the thing under test describe 'Addition-calculator' do it 'gives 5 for 2 and 3' do end It 'gives 3 for 3 and 0' do end end
20. Rspec basics • The syntax: verification: expect-to-eq expect(result-value).to eq(expected-value) Example: Rspec.describe 'MyCalculator' do it 'should give 5 for 2 and 3' do sum = MyCalculator.add(2, 3) expect(sum).to eq(5) end end
21. Rspec basics • The syntax: Thats it. • There are many more methods, concepts and conveniences • But to get started, this much is just fine
22. Rspec basics • Running it: – The code under test should have been loaded before the describe block starts – rspec test_file.rb Demo: 1_spec.rb
23. Rspec basics • Notes about setup: – Proper setup requires a Gemfile with rspec in it – Then bundle install ---binstubs – Then bin/rspec –init creates spec_helper and spec/ – Tests are kept in a spec directory – All test files should require the spec_helper on top
24. Rspec with Rails
25. Rspec with Rails • What can we test - – Models – Controllers – Views ? – Rake Tasks ? – Javascript – Overall UI ?
26. Rspec with Rails • What can we test, IMO - – Models Yes – Controllers Almost – Views Maybe – Rake Tasks Maybe – Javascript Yes – Browser UI Yes – API Yes Note: lib/ is also Yes
27. Rspec with Rails
28. Rspec with Rails Rules of the game: • Rails uses MiniTest by default – choose one • Rails has separate ENV and database for testing • Rspec tests are in spec/ folder • Rspec config is in spec/spec_helper and spec/rails_helper files • spec/rails_helper is required in all test files
29. Rspec with Rails Rules of the game: • Tests run: – rake for all – bin/rspec spec for all – bin/rspec spec/models for tests in models folder – bin/rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb for User model – bin/rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb:15 for test on line 15
30. Rspec with Rails • Rule of the game • Test-db should be empty when test is not running • Every test-case must create its data in test-db, and wipe it out when done. (Rspec does this for us) • Every test-case must be independent. It should not share any data/variables with another test. So we can run tests in any order. (Rspec does that too)
31. Rspec with Rails • Rule of the game • Since Models are tightly tied to ActiveRecord, model tests are not always unit test (Though this doesn't matter much) • We try to avoid database interaction in tests, as much as possible
32. Rspec with Rails • Rule of the game: • We run the tests on developer computers or separate test servers (called CI server too) • We DO NOT run tests on staging or production • [Again] We DO NOT maintain any data in test-db
33. Rspec with Rails • Demo: – blog: post_spec
34. Rspec with Rails • Post demo: – Creating data can get difficult – References to other classes, what to do with them?
35. Factories with Factory girl
36. Factories with Factory girl • Factories are one way to create data for tests • Data creation can become difficult when there are validations • There are other Factory gems: – Machinist – Fabrication
37. Factories with Factory-girl Rails default is Fixtures. It is: • Data expressed in YAML files, • Loaded in the DB at the start of test suite • much faster than Factories • Are global • Must be carefully maintained with database migrations
38. Factories with Factory-girl factory :registered_user, class: User do sequence(:username){|n| "registered-#{n}" } first_name 'example-fn' last_name 'example-ln' date_of_birth 35.years.ago gender 'Male' phone_number { "1234567#{rand(9)}89" } sequence(:email) { |n| "registered#{n}@example.com" } password 'example-password' password_confirmation {|u| u.password } registration_state 'registered' company { create(:company) } after(:create) do |user, e| user.add_role(:general_user) end end
39. To be continued