JS: Intro to Unit Testing

Learning Goals

• Explain what testing is
• Define Unit and Integration testing
• Justify the importance of Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Utilize red/green testing workflow
• Read and pass tests

Vocabulary

• TDD Test Driven Development / Design
• Assertion An expression containing some testable logic
• Assertion Library A package of assertion functionality. Usually distinct from a Testing Framework. Chai is an example.
• Testing Framework A library that determines how tests are organized and executed. Mocha is an example.
• Red/Green Testing - a workflow for testing your code, in which we write and fail tests (red) before we write any implementation code to pass the test (green)
• Unit Test A test that tests one function or one object in isolation to make sure that it behaves the way we were expecting it to behave
• Integration test A test that tests the interaction between two units to make sure that they play together nicely and work the way we expect them to work.

Strategies, Tools, and Functions

What does it mean to test your code?

We’re always testing our code. We pull it up in the browser and poke at it. Does it do the thing we were expecting it to do? Yes? Then the code works. It’s time to go and celebrate. No? Well then, back to the drawing board, right?

For small code bases, this works. Write or change some code and then flip over to the browser and check to see if you got the desired result. The problem is that this doesn’t scale very well. When our applications start getting big, we end up with more and more places to poke.

Even worse: we can end up in a situation where changing code in one place causes something to break somewhere else—somewhere that we’re not currently poking.

Unit Tests

The bulk of your tests for an application are likely to be unit tests. Unit tests test one function or one object in isolation to make sure that it behaves the way we were expecting it to behave. The bulk of your tests for an application are likely to be unit tests (both at Turing and in the work environment).

Integration Tests

Integration tests test the interaction between two units to make sure that they play together nicely and work the way we expect them to work. You will get opportunities to experiment with this type of test later on in Turing and in the work environment as well.

What is Test-Driven Development?

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is one of those things that is deceptively simple to explain and incredibly hard to do. The basic premise is that we write our test for a piece of required functionality before writing any implementation code.

Ideally, we’d follow Red/Green Testing. This means we would write the test, then fail the test, and then finally write the code to pass the test. Once the test passes, you can then safely refactor your code to optimize your solution.

The Testing Cycle

One important thing to note is that TDD is not about writing tests. Writing tests is writing tests, period. TDD is more than that - it’s a methodology in which three activities are tightly interwoven: testing (in the form of unit testing), coding, and design (in the form of refactoring). In order to do TDD well, you should follow the following steps:

1. Think and write test cases - this step ensures that you understand the functionality that is required
2. Red – In this step, you try to run your test. You have no implementation code, so your test should fail.
3. Green – Write the minimum code required to get the test to pass
4. Green – Ensure that no old tests fail.
5. Refactor - Refactor to ensure functionality is intact and the code is refined.
6. Repeat this cycle - Steps 1 - 5 are repeated multiple times so that all the features are covered in TDD cycles

What happens if you don’t test first?

“I’ll write tests later. I just want to get this working first,” is one of the greatest lies in software development and it’s usually one that we tell ourselves.

Beyond the issue of general motivation — let’s face it, you’re never going to go back and add those tests — there is the issue that not all code is testable. We won’t run into this issue today, but we will soon. The thing you want to keep in mind is that if you write your tests first, it’s really hard to find yourself in this situation.

Steve’s Law of Testing: If something is hard to test, it’s probably not your test’s fault.

Mocha and Chai

In Mod 1, we will be using the Mocha testing framework along with the assertion library Chai.

• Mocha is a testing framework that runs on Node.js in your terminal. This is what allows us to organize and execute our tests.

• Chai is an assertion library that plugs into Mocha. The assertion library is what actually runs the specs and determines whether any given condition is valid or not.

describe('addTwoNumbers', function() {
  it('should be able to add zero to zero', function() {

  });

  it.skip('should be able to add 1 to 1', function() {

  });
});

  assert.equal(addTwoNumbers(1, 1), 2);

Set Up

When we are testing code, it’s usually best to have the implementation code pulled up, as well as the test file. You’ll constantly be going back and forth between the two, and need to compare what is in each, so this will make you much more effiecient.

• Our implementation file refers to the code we are actually testing.
• Our test file will be the automated tests that we write, that verify our class or functions do what they should.
• It is important to keep scope in mind: variables declared in the test file are not available in the implementation file.

Testing Functions

Eventually, we’ll be writing our own tests, but for now we’ll start with some prewritten tests. This allows us to see the process, and get some practice reading error messages

Head over to that same repository and begin to follow the TDD workflow - fail the tests, then write the code to pass ‘em!

Extra Resources

• Unit Testing Practice