Split RSpec tests with Jenkins Parallel Pipeline to run specs faster

Jenkins CI server has a declarative pipeline that allows you to set Jenkins parallel stages. You can use the stages to run them at the same time (parallel run) to execute your RSpec test suite in a few smaller faster chunks instead of one long test suite run.

Running stages in parallel with Jenkins workflow pipeline

You will use Jenkinsfile and pipeline syntax to get parallel execution of tasks. RSpec tests need to be split in equal time across stages and to do that you need to ensure the time of each RSpec spec file won’t compound on one of the stages because that could lead to bottleneck - a stage that takes more time to run tests than other stages.

#jenkins #pipeline #rspec

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Split RSpec tests with Jenkins Parallel Pipeline to run specs faster

Jenkins CI server has a declarative pipeline that allows you to set Jenkins parallel stages. You can use the stages to run them at the same time (parallel run) to execute your RSpec test suite in a few smaller faster chunks instead of one long test suite run.

Running stages in parallel with Jenkins workflow pipeline

You will use Jenkinsfile and pipeline syntax to get parallel execution of tasks. RSpec tests need to be split in equal time across stages and to do that you need to ensure the time of each RSpec spec file won’t compound on one of the stages because that could lead to bottleneck - a stage that takes more time to run tests than other stages.

#jenkins #pipeline #rspec

Testing Microservices Applications

The shift towards microservices and modular applications makes testing more important and more challenging at the same time. You have to make sure that the microservices running in containers perform well and as intended, but you can no longer rely on conventional testing strategies to get the job done.

This is where new testing approaches are needed. Testing your microservices applications require the right approach, a suitable set of tools, and immense attention to details. This article will guide you through the process of testing your microservices and talk about the challenges you will have to overcome along the way. Let’s get started, shall we?

A Brave New World

Traditionally, testing a monolith application meant configuring a test environment and setting up all of the application components in a way that matched the production environment. It took time to set up the testing environment, and there were a lot of complexities around the process.

Testing also requires the application to run in full. It is not possible to test monolith apps on a per-component basis, mainly because there is usually a base code that ties everything together, and the app is designed to run as a complete app to work properly.

Microservices running in containers offer one particular advantage: universal compatibility. You don’t have to match the testing environment with the deployment architecture exactly, and you can get away with testing individual components rather than the full app in some situations.

Of course, you will have to embrace the new cloud-native approach across the pipeline. Rather than creating critical dependencies between microservices, you need to treat each one as a semi-independent module.

The only monolith or centralized portion of the application is the database, but this too is an easy challenge to overcome. As long as you have a persistent database running on your test environment, you can perform tests at any time.

Keep in mind that there are additional things to focus on when testing microservices.

• Microservices rely on network communications to talk to each other, so network reliability and requirements must be part of the testing.
• Automation and infrastructure elements are now added as codes, and you have to make sure that they also run properly when microservices are pushed through the pipeline
• While containerization is universal, you still have to pay attention to specific dependencies and create a testing strategy that allows for those dependencies to be included

Test containers are the method of choice for many developers. Unlike monolith apps, which lets you use stubs and mocks for testing, microservices need to be tested in test containers. Many CI/CD pipelines actually integrate production microservices as part of the testing process.

Contract Testing as an Approach

As mentioned before, there are many ways to test microservices effectively, but the one approach that developers now use reliably is contract testing. Loosely coupled microservices can be tested in an effective and efficient way using contract testing, mainly because this testing approach focuses on contracts; in other words, it focuses on how components or microservices communicate with each other.

Syntax and semantics construct how components communicate with each other. By defining syntax and semantics in a standardized way and testing microservices based on their ability to generate the right message formats and meet behavioral expectations, you can rest assured knowing that the microservices will behave as intended when deployed.

Ways to Test Microservices

It is easy to fall into the trap of making testing microservices complicated, but there are ways to avoid this problem. Testing microservices doesn’t have to be complicated at all when you have the right strategy in place.

There are several ways to test microservices too, including:

• Unit testing: Which allows developers to test microservices in a granular way. It doesn’t limit testing to individual microservices, but rather allows developers to take a more granular approach such as testing individual features or runtimes.
• Integration testing: Which handles the testing of microservices in an interactive way. Microservices still need to work with each other when they are deployed, and integration testing is a key process in making sure that they do.
• End-to-end testing: Which⁠—as the name suggests⁠—tests microservices as a complete app. This type of testing enables the testing of features, UI, communications, and other components that construct the app.

What’s important to note is the fact that these testing approaches allow for asynchronous testing. After all, asynchronous development is what makes developing microservices very appealing in the first place. By allowing for asynchronous testing, you can also make sure that components or microservices can be updated independently to one another.

#blog #microservices #testing #caylent #contract testing #end-to-end testing #hoverfly #integration testing #microservices #microservices architecture #pact #testing #unit testing #vagrant #vcr

Software Testing 101: Regression Tests, Unit Tests, Integration Tests

Automation and segregation can help you build better software
If you write automated tests and deliver them to the customer, he can make sure the software is working properly. And, at the end of the day, he paid for it.

Ok. We can segregate or separate the tests according to some criteria. For example, “white box” tests are used to measure the internal quality of the software, in addition to the expected results. They are very useful to know the percentage of lines of code executed, the cyclomatic complexity and several other software metrics. Unit tests are white box tests.

#testing #software testing #regression tests #unit tests #integration tests

Jenkins Is Getting Old — It’s Time to Move On

By far, Jenkins is the most adopted tool for continuous integration, owning nearly 50% of the market share. As so many developers are using it, it has excellent community support, like no other Jenkins alternative. With that, it has more than 1,500 plugins available for continuous integration and delivery purposes.

We love and respect Jenkins. After all, it’s the first tool we encountered at the beginning of our automation careers. But as things are rapidly changing in the automation field, Jenkins is** left behind with his old approach**. Even though many developers and companies are using it, most of them aren’t happy with it. Having used it ourselves on previous projects, we quickly became frustrated by its lack of functionality, numerous maintenance issues, dependencies, and scaling problems.

We decided to investigate if other developers face the same problems and quickly saw the need to create a tool ourselves. We asked some developers at last year’s AWS Summit in Berlin about this. Most of them told us that they chose Jenkins because it’s free in the first place. However, many of them expressed interest in trying to use some other Jenkins alternative.

#devops #continuous integration #jenkins #devops adoption #jenkins ci #jenkins pipeline #devops continuous integration #jenkins automation #jenkins scripts #old technology

How to Do API Testing?

Nowadays API testing is an integral part of testing. There are a lot of tools like postman, insomnia, etc. There are many articles that ask what is API, What is API testing, but the problem is How to do API testing? What I need to validate.

Note: In this article, I am going to use postman assertions for all the examples since it is the most popular tool. But this article is not intended only for the postman tool.

Let’s directly jump to the topic.

Let’s consider you have an API endpoint example http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/{{username}} when you send the get request to that URL it returns the JSON response.

My API endpoint is http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/{{username}}

The response is in JSON format like below

JSON

{
  "jobTitle": "string",
  "userid": "string",
  "phoneNumber": "string",
  "password": "string",
  "email": "user@example.com",
  "firstName": "string",
  "lastName": "string",
  "userName": "string",
  "country": "string",
  "region": "string",
  "city": "string",
  "department": "string",
  "userType": 0
}

In the JSON we can see there are properties and associated values.

Now, For example, if we need details of the user with the username ‘ganeshhegde’ we need to send a **GET **request to **http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/ganeshhegde **

Now there are two scenarios.

1. Valid Usecase: User is available in the database and it returns user details with status code 200

2. Invalid Usecase: User is Unavailable/Invalid user in this case it returns status with code 404 with not found message.

#tutorial #performance #api #test automation #api testing #testing and qa #application programming interface #testing as a service #testing tutorial #api test